Article July 26, 1947 Issue

WHAT IS IT THAT WE CRITICIZE?

ELSIE J. PERRY

How prone the human mind is to criticize! It jumps to hasty conclusions on the most flimsy evidence and often discovers, after these opinions have been aired, that it has judged erroneously, harshly, unjustly. It then has to retract, explain, or apologize for the rash statements. Yet even after a number of such aberrations the temptation to look on the outward appearance may repeatedly recur. Even though criticism does not extend beyond one's thought, it must not be condoned, for the tendency to see evil as real is one of "the little foxes, that spoil the vines" and indicates that we are not seeing, as God would have us see, the perfection of man and the universe.

All earnest students of Christian Science have accepted the fact recorded in the first chapter of Genesis (verse 27), "God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him." Later in the same chapter we read (verse 31), "God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good." All Christians concede that God is good; therefore man, made in His image and likeness, must be the likeness of the infinite, all-inclusive God, good. The basic truth of the universe is that creation is good, proceeding from a good God. God's idea, man, made in His image and likeness, reflects eternally the substance of good, the nature or character of God. Man can never lose his spiritual character or become separated from it for a moment, since it is inherent in his God-constituted being.

Since the man God makes is wholly good, what then of the mortal persons who arouse our criticism and the discords which frequently confront us by reason of persons? When we look upon some trait in another which we regard as unpleasant but very much a part of him, when we see another's glaring fault as characteristic of his selfhood, when we feel that our brother's opinions are always wrong or that his actions always merit censure, we may know that mortal mind, rather than the one divine Mind, is in the ascendant in our thought. We are obviously judging our brother from a material standpoint, to which evil seems a reality. Thus we are seeing only a distorted and fraudulent concept of man, and the remedy lies not in changing externals, but in changing our own view of man. This is perhaps the hardest lesson we may have to encounter. It is a lesson which calls for humility, repentance, and the elimination of arrogant human opinions. But unless we learn it, digest it, and apply it, we shall never know true happiness.

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