TURNING OVER A NEW LEAF
The beginning of New Year is traditionally, though often humorously, regarded as a time to turn over a new leaf, an opportunity to forswear evil practices. The urge behind this gesture is a natural one. The desire of humanity for freedom from inharmony is coupled with an often hopeless wish for removal of the seeming influence of past mistakes, and for a fresh start. It sometimes appears hopeless because of the erroneous belief that mistakes are real and that their effect continue to influence one's freedom to think and act rightly.
Christian Science, however, shows that it is always possible at any time to start over, that is, to set out anew on the quest for spirtual understanding and resulting health and happiness. It shows that in reality evil in any form—whether it is sin, disease, or death—being unlike God, must have only suppositional existence. This is so because the Bible makes it clear that God is good, that He made all, and that "behold, it was very good." Thus error, being without entity, has no history and never has been a part of one's experience, except in belief. It follows that the turning over of a new leaf consists of turning to God as All and of recognizing man, one's true spiritual selfhood, as the idea of, and thus inseparable from, God. It involves giving up the belief in evil as fact.
Carrying this logical line of thought still further, the student of Christian Science sees that the past is not a factor in determining whether one may or may not successfully begin anew. Neither is this fresh start limited or influenced by place or person. Nothing but one's own thinking could affect the opportunity for and the success of this endeavor.
One need not await the New Year in order to do what is right. Because God is omnipotent, there exists nothing to stop him at any moment from thinking and doing right, and doing it effectively and without penalty, as long as there is a right desire and thought is receptive. If, though, one has a desire to sin or believes that evil is a part of God's creation, he will have no success in resisting this evil merely because of a change in the calendar, or because of a resolution written or said. On the other hand, right desire and reformation, coupled with an increasingly clear recognition of one's true selfhood as the image of God, Mind, and of the fact that evil is without power, inevitably bring a rich reward, quite independent of the calendar.
While it is well to know that a mere profession of repentance does not wipe out error or its seeming effects, it is indeed a good thing that one can, at any moment, seek and obtain forgiveness. Mary Baker Eddy explains true forgiveness in the third of the six Tenets of Christian Science, on page 497 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures": "We acknowledge God's forgiveness of sin in the spiritual understanding that casts out evil as unreal. But the belief in sin is punished so long as the belief lasts." The individual task, then, is not just to wipe out supposed past sins, but to destroy in consciousness the sense of sin. Having turned over the new leaf and set forth toward this goal, one finds increasing success in overcoming human discords and better progress in the inevitable overcoming of mortality altogether.
The new birth of which Jesus spoke (John 3:3) is of course not a matter of momentary decision or determination. Mrs. Eddy says of it (Miscellaneous Writings, p. 15 ), "It begins with moments, and goes on with years." The important thing is that one need never fear that, having determined to forsake evil and learn more of God, he can be deterred thereafter by a belief formerly entertained, but now rejected, or by an act or circumstances of the past now seen as past of the moral dream. The only possible obstruction to one's individual human progress and his eventual salvation is his own acceptance of the supposed reality of evil. True repentance, which includes the acceptance of spiritual existence as the only reality, is possible for anyone, at any time. The degree of one's acceptance of this spiritual reality is determined by individual spiritual perception and not by material conditions, past or present, not by something beyond one's control or outside the operation of God's law.
To assume that God, who is good and all-powerful, created man in His image and then allowed this man somehow to cease to be an image and to sin and suffer, merely to test and strengthen him (one who already, as the image of the all-powerful God, surely needed no strengthening) is a self-contradiction, a fallacy of human philosophy which lies at the root of humankind's seeming troubles. The man of God's creating never could be less than perfect. Seeing this fact more clearly, through improved spiritual perception, one finds experience to be more harmonious.
A full consciousness of God's all-ness and man's spiritual perfection destroys completely not only a sense of sin but the sense of materiality. Immortality is thus attained. But only a measure of this understanding is sufficient to remove that which might seem to rise out of the so-called past to affect one's present human experience. This understanding acts to nullify any supposed inharmonious result of past wrongs. Thus it is seen that having determined to do right, one may set out on the narrow way with no impediments other than those which accompany a continuing sense of materiality. And these are destroyed as one overcomes, in the measure of his spiritual understanding, that sense of materiality.
The comforting fact is—and this is the central point of our discussion—that one always has the opportunity to begin aright and to prove in some degree man's God-given freedom from limitation. The turning of the leaf is the decision to turn to God. The full accomplishment of the task then ahead may take time, but one has with him at every step in this endeavor the impelling, irresistible power of God, divine Love.
It matters not how long a diseased or inharmonious condition has appeared to exist. It matters now how long one has believed that four times four is seventeen. Four times four is sixteen, and believing otherwise for a hundred years would not make it anything else or make it any less possible to understand and use.
The Preacher writes (Eccl. 3: 15 ), "God requireth that which is past." God Himself, being "of purer eyes than to behold evil," does not consciously do something with this mystical thing called the past or with the sense of sin which humanly seems to be in one's recollection of past experience. Does not this passage mean rather that a consciousness of God's presence, of His goodness and allness, necessarily wipes out any sense of a sinful past? This "past," in other words, is taken from us, removed from consciousness, and thus prevented from having any influence in our experience. Actually, there is no time, for time is but a mortal concept.
Suppose one who has indulged in sin learns to loathe it and turns to God for healing. Having seen something of the infinite nature of God and of His idea, man, and having given up his belief in the necessity or reality of sin, may this one begin his new enlightened human experience without fetters? He certainly may. He can know that man, his true identity, is, as the infinite reflection of God, ever without fetters. As he sees this fact more clearly and strives to overcome the belief in material limitation, he will find his human progress in proportion unimpeded.
Suppose one in the past suffered an experience which appears to have left irreparable physical evidence. Suppose this one similarly turns in complete humility and receptivity to God. May he still find health and activity and well-being and satisfaction? He certainly may. Precisely how human conditions will be adjusted is not to be outlined, but one may know that experience will be joyful and complete in the proportion the his perception of spiritual existence improves.
Whatever the past belief or circumstance, the task of forsaking evil, of learning to love and understand God, of turning over a new leaf, may be undertaken when one chooses—at the beginning of the New Year, yes, but also on every day of the year, and in every hour and in every minute.
