Editorial September 22, 1962 Issue

Overcoming Self-righteousness

Carl J. Welz

Naaman was unhappy. He had reason to be. He was an important man, and he had expected Elisha, the man of God, to come and "call on the name of the Lord his God, and strike his hand over the place" (II Kings 5:11) and cure his leprosy. But Elisha asked him to dip himself seven times in a river, and the river was not the one Naaman would have chosen. When self-righteousness yielded, Naaman obeyed, and he was healed.

How often do we find ourselves unhappy? And with good reason. We have sought God's help through Christian Science, and we have expected this Science to change something, perhaps to soften someone's uncompromising egotism—not our own, of course —or to cause a change in plans so that we should not have to endure an unpleasantness or to remove instantly a painful disease or to provide a sudden, unexpected source of supply.

But instead we find ourselves prodded, either by Love or by suffering, to look within ourselves and to yield in humility—to acknowledge that all is well right now—and to seek Life's perfection in the present. We may be protesting this prodding with the thought, Wouldn't it be a far more glorious demonstration to have things the way I had expected?

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