Article July 5, 1930 Issue

Loves Overcomes Resentment

SARA L. MC SHANE

Expressing the love which is born of a knowledge of God and His spiritual creation, Jesus petitioned in behalf of his enemies, "Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do." In his consciousness, so filled with spiritual love and understanding, there was no room for resentment. Rather did Jesus entertain compassion for those seemingly engulfed in the darkness of materiality, and he patiently awaited Truth's unfoldment. Such is the love demanded of us as Christian Scientists—love that comes from the true knowledge of God and of man's relationship to Him, as taught by Jesus and revealed in Christian Science.

Since, as the Scriptures aver and as Christian Science teaches, God is infinite divine Love and man His expression, in reality there can be nothing to cause offense, and therefore nothing to resent. Resentment is the outcome of ignorant misunderstanding, a personal or material sense of things which holds the false view of creation as set forth in most of the book of Genesis. It is, then, owing to a lack of spiritual sense that one feels resentful in response to an offense; and it is only as the understanding of divine Love dawns upon human consciousness that one is healed and his debtor forgiven. To have one's own debts forgiven, one must himself reflect a measure of divine Love. One's debt to God is to live rightly; and to do so is to love one's brother as one's self, to see spiritually. "If one lives rightly," Mrs. Eddy writes in "Miscellaneous Writings" (p. 115), "every effort to hurt one will only help that one; for God will give the ability to overcome whatever tends to impede progress."

When a student of Christian Science is tempted to feel resentment against a brother, even though seemingly justified because of grave injustice, he turns to God, divine Principle, to find the solution of his problem. His search for Truth leads to an awakened love for all mankind; for through a clearer realization of the true or spiritual creation, as presented in the first chapter of Genesis and so clearly interpreted by Christian Science, the real, spiritual man is discerned. Error is then seen as an impersonal lie, as but an illusion through which evil attempts to deceive. Its seeming reality or power is thus destroyed. Is not the great problem confronting each of us to keep in consciousness the truth concerning spiritual creation?

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