Editorial February 24, 1945 Issue

Are We in the Blessing Business?

John Randall Dunn

A little girl had just returned from a Christian Science Sunday School. "Oh, Mother," she exclaimed joyously, "this morning we had the blesseds!" Of course one familiar with the Bible study outlined for our Sunday schools recognizes in the child's "blesseds" the Beatitudes from Jesus' Sermon on the Mount. Indeed, young children and children no longer young are speedily introduced to both "blesseds" and blessings when they take their first steps in Christian Science. They discover that, as sons of God, they are definitely in the blessing business. The words translated "bless" and "blessings" in both the Hebrew and the Greek texts in the Bible have these felicitous connotations: fortunate, happy, thankful. So, in the Gospel according to Matthew, we find Christ Jesus teaching his followers that the meek, the pure in heart, the spiritually hungry, the makers of peace—in other words, those who are striving for spiritualized consciousness —are the truly happy, the blest, the fortunate.

If one would adequately appraise and appreciate that love-some word "bless," let him first consider the woeful implications of its opposite, "curse." What utterly unlovely pictures are conjured up by this unthinkable term, which involves malediction, execration, and everything that is murderous and hateful!

In the twenty-third chapter of Numbers is a brief but inspiring record of the first Biblical personage definitely to announce himself as being in the blessing business. Balak, the king of Moab, calls on the prophet Balaam to "curse ... Jacob" and "defy Israel"; but the seer inquires, "How shall I curse, whom God hath not cursed? or how shall I defy, whom the Lord hath not defied?" And then we read that the king says to Balaam: "What hast thou done unto me? I took thee to curse mine enemies, and, behold, thou hast blessed them altogether." The prophet finally sums up his life-purpose thus: "Behold, I have received commandment to bless: and he hath blessed; and I cannot reverse it." And then follows this positive declaration of truth, which nullifies any mesmeric diabolism of the carnal mind: "Surely there is no enchantment against Jacob, neither is there any divination against Israel." After this revelation of divine facts, should we be surprised to note that the spiritually-minded Balaam is one of the first prophets to foresee the coming of the Messiah?

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