Article September 29, 1956 Issue

CHRISTIAN SCIENCE: A HELP IN SPORTS

[Of Special Interest to Young People]

LORETTA WHITE JAEGER

One autumn day as the bus drove along, Jack, who was the fullback on his team and who was on his way to the most important football game of the season, thought of what the coach had told him during the week. His high school had a good chance to win the county championship this year. Also all the important plays were to be built around the fullback.

This athlete was a Christian Scientist and always used the truths he had learned in Sunday School in his preparation for every athletic event. He had a fine record in tennis, track, baseball, and wrestling. On this particular day he thought of Mary Baker Eddy's definition of man in the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 475): "Man is idea, the image, of Love; he is not physique. He is the compound idea of God, includingall right ideas." He reasoned that he was not really a mortal going to compete with other mortals, but a spiritual idea, including the right idea of sport.

He recalled another passage from Science and Health (p. 514): "Mind, joyous in strength, dwells in the realm of Mind. Mind's infinite ideas run and disport themselves." He realized that in reality he was not dependent upon material muscles but upon Mind for speed and strength, for gaiety, joy, and buoyancy—qualities which he reflected as the image of God. He lifted his thought to see that as idea he moved in Mind, in harmonious relationship with all of God's ideas. He knew that this truth would act as a law of freedom and protection to him.

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