Editorial December 13, 1952 Issue

A HEALING APPROACH

Helen Wood Bauman

The spirit of Christianity animates those who approach every problem with the desire to heal and save the victims of error, rather than to condemn and punish them. Christ Jesus set the example for such an approach many times, but never more forcibly than when he rebuked James and John for suggesting that fire be called down to consume some Samaritan villagers who had refused him hospitality. He said (Luke 9:55, 56): "Ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of. For the Son of man is not come to destroy men's lives, but to save them."

The instinctive mortal approach to an affront is generally that of resentment. But our Leader, Mary Baker Eddy, says in her tenderly persuasive way: "Nothing short of our own errors should offend us. He who can wilfully attempt to injure another, is an object of pity rather than of resentment" (Miscellaneous Writings, p. 224). Christian Science reveals great healing truths which lift men above petty considerations of personal retaliation into the atmosphere of heaven, where God is understood to be All and His children to be dwelling in eternal harmony. Christian Science makes one eager to prove this harmony. It inspires one to dedicate himself to destroy the illusions of the false material senses and to bring into his experience the facts of real life in Spirit. His desire to punish human injustice is silenced by his yearning to demonstrate the mercy of divine Love, which wipes out the greater injustice—the illusion that man is a sinful mortal, deceived by wicked mental impulses he little comprehends.

The refusal to be offended by the careless or malicious intentions of others never adds fuel to the fire of human contention, but often helps quench what might become a mental conflagration.

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