Article July 11, 1942 Issue

Why Fear Examinations?

[Written Especially for Young People]

WILLIAM E. BENNETT

Many young people have been known to fail in their examinations, not because they have not understood their subject but because they have been temporarily influenced by fear, the fear that they would fail. This fear has seemed to be very real in spite of the fact that they have worked diligently during the preparation period for the examination and have taken all possible human footsteps in order to prepare thoroughly for the test to come.

Suggestions such as absentmindedness, poor memory, lack of intelligence, a sense of inferiority, confusion, and so forth, which come to our thinking and together produce a fearful state of consciousness, are not based on understanding and intelligence, but are the result of misunderstanding and ignorance, and in the light of Christian Science are known to be aggressive mental suggestions, having no justification for existence and in no way included in God's perfect creation. The exclamation, "I fear I shall fail!" is an erroneous statement. It is the voice of a lie; it also indicates the expectation of evil, of something foreign to God's plan. Such expectation, however, is impossible when we put our trust in God.

In the Scriptures we read, "All things were made by him [God]; and without him was not any thing made that was made." This we know to be true, and God's Word, recognized and understood, dispels fear. Knowing that "all things were made by him," and that all that He made was "very good," we are assured that failure is not an idea of God, and therefore must not be entertained in our thinking. An expectation of evil of any kind is wiped out by the sure knowledge that there has never been, there is not now, and there never will be anything but God's goodness available to man.

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