Editorial August 26, 1944 Issue

The Joy of Untangling Snarls

John Randall Dunn

"Oh , what a tangled web we weave," exclaims Sir Walter Scott in his poem "Marmion." Could a better word picture be drawn of the predicament of mortals, uninstructed in spiritual things, vainly striving to extricate themselves from their self-imposed snarls? The prophet Isaiah also descants upon this theme when he exclaims: "Fear, and the pit, and the snare, are upon thee, O inhabitant of the earth. And it shall come to pass, that he who fleeth from the noise of the fear shall fall into the pit; and he that Cometh up out of the midst of the pit shall be taken in the snare." The story is told of a very pious individual who endeavored to accept every untoward circumstance as a visitation of God. But, finally, when one disaster followed another in quick succession, his piety wavered, and looking reproachfully heavenward he said, "Lord, this is just getting to be ridiculous!"

Now the state of mind of such a person is salutary, if it is awakening him to the error of accepting discord and disease as the will of a good God, and if it is arousing in his thinking a wholesome protest against evil. Christ Jesus very definitely refused to accede to the common error of naming the Almighty as the author of human ills. Did he not say that the woman bowed with infirmity for eighteen years had been bound by Satan? It is interesting to find that in both the original Hebrew and Greek, the word "Satan" means the accuser, the adversary. One takes the first step out of the maze of mortal discord, therefore, when he sees that his difficulties proceed from that which opposes or is averse to good, and not from that great First Cause which is infinite good itself. In "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 114) our revered Leader, Mary Baker Eddy, writes: "Christian Science explains all cause and effect as mental, not physical. It lifts the veil of mystery from Soul and body. It shows the scientific relation of man to God, disentangles the interlaced ambiguities of being, and sets free the imprisoned thought."

In facing the snarls and tangles of mankind today, be they international, national, or personal, we find the problems the same. We are caught in the web of mental conflict, fear, greed, war, sin, or discord, because of mortals' ignorance of God and man. The sagacious Ben Jonson wrote, "I know no disease of the soul but ignorance:...a pernicious evil, the darkener of man's life, the disturber of his reason, and common confounder of truth."

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