Article September 19, 1970 Issue

The Shepherding Mind

MERLE W. MILLER

In Scripture, God is often referred to as the Shepherd and His people as His sheep. By this word picture the Bible illustrates our heavenly Father's tender, watchful care for each one of us.

In Christian Science we learn to know God also as the ever-present, divine Mind, and man in his true being as individual, spiritual consciousness dwelling within the allness of this Mind as its individualized expression. Thus, when we say that God takes care of man, we are really saying that the divine Mind cares about and cares for each individual consciousness, furnishing it with the divinely mental qualities needed for total well-being, for health and happiness, security and peace. With God as the shepherding Mind and individual consciousness as the sheep, the pastures man feeds upon are those elements of Mind that nourish and sustain—qualities such as praise, love, joy, intelligence, purity, and assurance.

When any type of discord arises in human experience, the alert student of Christian Science recognizes that it is the result of the false belief that the individual consciousness is human and can wander away from the care of the shepherding Mind, away from its nourishing pastures onto the thorny fields of what Paul calls the carnal mind—mortal mind, as it is designated in Christian Science. Here, according to false belief, thought feeds upon a draining diet of fear, loneliness, selfishness, immorality, discouragement, and the like—all ingredients of materiality that result in discordant outward conditions.

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