Article April 17, 1948 Issue

REFUSE TO BE AN ADOLESCENT

[Of Special Interest to Young People]

JEAN ELSIE SANDERS

In a crowded streetcar a woman was overheard complaining dismally to a companion about the baffling behavior of her young daughter. The unhappy mother finally remarked. "She's just at the adolescent age, and what else can I do but suffer through it?"

If the mother had been a Christian Scientist, she would have known there was a great deal she could do besides suffer through it. The most important step would have been to stop seeing her daughter as a changeable mortal and to reach out prayerfully for a clearer view of her child's true identity and individuality as God's child. And if the daughter had been a student of Christian Science, perhaps attending a Christian Science Sunday School, she would have been learning simple but powerful spiritual truths with which to defend herself against the mortal mind belief called adolescence.

Let us consider for a moment the definition of adolescence: "The state or process of growing up from childhood to manhood or womanhood." Its very meaning implies a mortal, born into matter, developing physically, passing from one state of mortal mind to another. Such a condition does not exist in God's kingdom, where all that He creates is "very good," as well as complete and satisfying.

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REFUSE TO BE AN ADOLESCENT

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