Article March 4, 1950 Issue

"LOOSE HIM, AND LET HIM GO"

DOROTHY A. EREAUT

When Jesus brought Lazarus forth from the tomb, the latter emerged bound hand and foot in a winding sheet. Jesus said to those relatives and friends of Lazarus who stood by, "Loose him, and let him go" (John 11:44). The power of the divine Mind, which had raised Lazarus from the dead, was surely able also to free him from the encumbering graveclothes, yet Jesus laid this duty on his family. Those who had bound him hand and foot in the belief of death must set him free.

How often do we unwittingly seem to bind our loved ones in the bonds of possessiveness, to confine them in the belief of life in matter, and to deprive them of their natural heritage of freedom of thought and action? There is, for example, a type of mother-love which wraps a child in mental swaddling clothes, hedging him about with anxious care, making him weak when he should be strong and dependent when he should be self-reliant. To one who perhaps unconsciously has accepted this false concept of love comes again the command of the Christ, "Loose him, and let him go." Loose him through the understanding that man has always the protection of his Father-Mother and that man's heritage as God's child is freedom and dominion.

The relationship of parent and child sometimes appears discordant solely because it is being based on the false premise that man is a creator. But if we turn from this premise and realize that there is only one Parent, the Father-Mother God, that those who seem to be entangled in intricate human relationships—parents, children, husbands, wives—are all in reality children of the one divine Parent, and that the relationship of God and His idea is the only true relationship, the restricting bonds of personal sense fall away. This does not separate us from our loved ones, but unites us more closely to each other as we perceive our unchanging, harmonious relationship as children of the one Father-Mother God.

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