Article January 31, 1931 Issue

Our Human Relations

LUCY ELIZABETH WEIR

Loving our neighbor as ourselves is seeing him as in reality he is, the true man; seeing him, as Mrs. Eddy says in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 475), without "a single quality underived from Deity." This recognition of the perfect man, God's image and likeness, precludes the possibility of misjudgment, resentment regarding that which mortal mind says about our neighbor, pettiness, and the inviting of discord. All we can truly know about our neighbor's real selfhood is what God, divine Mind, knows; and that certainly does not include any of the disagreeable situations that may arise in our human contacts with one another.

The whole lie of discordant relationship is based on a belief of more than one mind and a selfhood apart from God. This belief of a material selfhood takes on such proportions that the slightest breeze may ruffle or disconcert the harmony of its so-called being. Personal sense will attach erroneous motives to everything which causes it displeasure, whether erroneous or not. It will resent all that does not exactly fit in with its plan of existence and activity. Then, it views its neighbor as another such self; and thus we have a belief of more than one Mind, and consequent strife. This egotism imagines the most unheard-of situations about itself and its neighbor; and the big thing we call "our problem" appears to us an insurmountable difficulty, dense blackness shutting out from our consciousness the light of Truth.

There is a way out of such a negative, unreal concept; and it is the divine way, the Christ-way, the way that is straight and narrow. It does not run out into dark, hidden corners, but abides in the light of Truth, leading into "the glorious liberty of the children of God." How, we may ask, is it possible for one to find this pathway to freedom from mental strife and physical bondage? There is just one way, and it is the way of the truth which Mrs. Eddy so definitely indicates (ibid., p. 262): "We must reverse our feeble flutterings—our efforts to find life and truth in matter—and rise above the testimony of the material senses, above the mortal to the immortal idea of God. These clearer, higher views inspire the Godlike man to reach the absolute centre and circumference of his being." It is by refusing to admit the reality of a mind apart from God, an activity other than the activity of divine Mind, and a law other than the law of Love, that we can always find "the way."

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