Article June 17, 1944 Issue

The Christian Scientist in the Armed Forces

JOHN HIBBARD TRIPP

The Christian Scientist who is now a member of the armed forces is continually confronted with many mesmeric arguments challenging the spiritual understanding which has unfolded through the study of Christian Science. Daily, hourly, he finds the specious argument of materiality, in many guises, clamoring for admittance into his consciousness. Perhaps the arguments of separation from loved ones, separation from his career, his business, his normal human contacts, which he has labored long to build, cry fiercely for attention.

These lying arguments of a power apart from God, good, seem all the more real because of the constant pressure that is brought upon him. Many times, for example, his fellow servicemen express dissatisfaction and a general state of negative thinking. In order to maintain the satisfying consciousness which the student has realized through his study and application of Christian Science, he must adhere to the correct standpoint.

Does not the argument of a human selfhood which is localized in matter, circumscribed by matter, and from which proceed all sin, disease, and death, contradict the truth of being that man is made in God's likeness? The acceptance of the belief that man is involved in material living necessitates the conclusion that the kingdom of heaven is always outside and beyond our reach, to be gained at some future time, in a manner now unknown. If thinking, therefore, is based on such fundamentally false theories, the student may be sure that he is not approaching the problem from the correct and scientific standpoint.

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