Article April 21, 1923 Issue

Untangling the Snarls

FRED J. FISHER

While meditating one day on a problem which seemed difficult to solve, the writer walked up to a table and stood before it thinking. He glanced down at the table, and picked up a small punch of string which had become badly tangled. Thoughtlessly, he picked here and there at the string, trying to straighten it out. Then the thought came to find an end of the string, and work systematically to undo each tangled place as he came to it. Thus it was not long until he had the satisfaction of seeing the snarls all removed. The string was then wound up into an orderly little coil, and made secure so that it could not again become tangled. This little incident furnished the writer with thoughts that were of value in solving his mental problems.

Sometimes error would tempt us to think that we can get along by making a few Christianly scientific statements of a general nature about our problems, and that we need do nothing further. We may wonder why this story of treatment does not solve them. If we go back to the divine Principle of being, in our efforts to untangle our snarled thoughts, it matters not whether these false thoughts present themselves as beliefs of ill health, inharmony, or of lack in its many forms, we shall always find that we have started correctly. And the Christian Scientist soon learns that God is divine Principle. In the first chapter of Genesis we have the record of true creation. Here we find that God not only created, but completed and made perfect, the universe, including man. This universe and this man of God's creating, being spiritual, have never changed; and man is perfect now, since he has never fallen away from God. In the third chapter of I John we read, "Beloved, now are we the sons of God," showing that now man is perfect, and that we should never allow mortal sense to deceive us into believing its false testimony about man. That which we appear to be conscious of through the testimony of the five physical senses is never really true. Then error never entered into man's existence as a reality. Instead, error is never more than a belief or illusion of so-called mortal mind, since it is never true, and consequently can never accomplish or create anything real. Our Leader, Mary Baker Eddy, tells us, on page 468 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," that "all is infinite Mind and its infinite manifestation, for God is All-in-all." Then that which God, or Mind, creates is all that has any true existence. Knowing this, our belief in the reality of evil becomes less and less, until our problems lose their seeming reality, and gradually disappear from our experience.

After solving his first problem in Christian Science, the writer was surprised when he found that it was not long before he was face to face with another, which seemed even more difficult than the first. But on looking back over his experiences in later years, he saw that they were much the same as the untangling of the string. The second claim of error had been lying dormant; but because the first problem seemed so very real it had to be destroyed first, in order that the next erroneous belief could come to the surface to be also removed. To begin with, he was inclined to self-pity when he found he had one problem after another to meet; but it was not long until he learned to be grateful for this, for he found that it was God's way of purifying him from all his false beliefs.

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