Article November 17, 1945 Issue

Spiritual Decisiveness

ROBERT BARTELS

One at times hears gratitude expressed for slow healings in Christian Science, because through them lessons of humility, consecration, sincerity, and the like have been learned. This is praiseworthy, but little attention is usually given to the fact that the delay in healing is sometimes caused by the student's slowness to learn humility and other graces. God is not a disciplinarian giving us sickness as a means of teaching spirituality. On the contrary, discord originates in lack of spirituality, and harmony is gained in the measure that our thoughts become Godlike.

If one has experienced a slow healing but has recovered, let him give God thanks. But if he is in the midst of slow recovery, he will do well to discover the lesson he is reluctant to learn, and learn it quickly. Such self-examination is not only wise for individuals with sick bodies, but equally helpful for those whose progress in Christian Science is slower than they might wish, those who feel oppressed by persons, circumstances, and environment, and those who knowingly indulge the sins of envy, hatred, animality, or dishonesty. If in any way one's human experience lacks the progressive appearing of spiritual good, let him look for the reason in his own consciousness and learn the needed lesson.

The more obvious errors of mortal-mindedness we have come rather quickly to recognize, but errors which many are less alert to correct are the errors of indecision. Indeed, indecisiveness concerning Spirit and things spiritual is a basic error, for it is the antipode of that state of consciousness which knows the truth, and knows that it is true. We must become more spiritually positive, wavering less between mental contraries, more confident in Spirit than in matter.

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