Article June 18, 1966 Issue

Expressing versus Impressing

MERLE W. MILLER

One evening a Christian Scientist dressed to attend, with her husband, a dinner planned by the top officials of his company, and she turned to God in prayer, as Scientists make a practice of doing, for the purpose of properly preparing her thought for the occasion. These words came to her: "Aren't you glad that you are going for the purpose of expressing instead of impressing!'" Perhaps one of the greatest freedoms the individual in Christian Science enjoys is that of being occupied with expressing God, good, in thought and deed rather than with impressing the world in some personal way.

Christian Science teaches us to be aware of the great spiritual fact of the real man's indissoluble unity with God; and when we speak of the real man, we mean the true and present selfhood of all of us as God has created us in His own likeness. A likeness cannot possibly be dissociated from that which it is like. Man, God's image, is not out on his own, apart from God, striving to be something or do something under his own power. The eternal source of man's activity is Mind, God. Mind is continuously expressing itself, and man is that expression. What a different concept this is from the material belief about man who in today's world is subject to pressure, tension, disappointment, as he treads along the rutted road of trying to be a successful mortal.

The Christian Scientist is a yes-man only in his response to God. He says Yes to all that God requires. But he does not fall into the trap of believing that he must compromise conscience in order to be accepted in the business or social community. Expressing God, Principle, all the way—yielding himself to Truth's direction in the elevating of humanity—he finds that the expressing of good becomes the all of his life and purpose.

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