Article August 15, 1970 Issue

Love Can Take No Offense

LUCILLE M. HASLEY

Speaking of charity, or love, the Apostle Paul wrote the Corinthians that it "is not easily provoked." I Cor. 13:5; Such love reflects divine Love, God, and we can express that love by reason of our relationship to God as His idea. In her answer to the question "What is man?" Mrs. Eddy states, "Man is idea, the image, of Love." Science and Health, p. 475; It is inconceivable that the image of Love can either hurt or be hurt.

What is it, then, that takes offense? It is personal sense, that false sense of a selfhood apart from God. And how does this false sense claim to control us? Through self-love. Then, since it is self-love that takes offense, our refuge from the liability to be hurt or offended is in unselfed love—the love that desires to find its own good in that of another. The one who is actuated by unselfed love does not seek place or position; he wants only the place where God would have him be. His continual prayer is, "Not my will, but thine, be done." Luke 22:42; He is content to be about the Father's business and to give all the glory to Him.

"Self-love is more opaque than a solid body," writes Mrs. Eddy; and she continues, "In patient obedience to a patient God, let us labor to dissolve with the universal solvent of Love the adamant of error,—self-will, self-justification, and self-love,—which wars against spirituality and is the law of sin and death." Science and Health, p. 242; One using this "universal solvent of Love" will have no thought of self; he cannot offend or be offended. He forgives wrong before it is committed, cherishes no resentment, plots no revenge. He cannot see a false friend or a malicious enemy as real. When we consciously affirm our at-one-ment with God as His idea, we find ourselves reflecting more of this love in our contacts with others and in our thoughts of them.

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