Article July 24, 1971 Issue

Immovable Truth and Social Change

ELOISE P. HENDRICK

To stand unmoved in the conviction of God's immutable allness and perfection and at the same time recognize the legitimacy of social change is not a contradictory position. God's presence recognized inevitably brings changes to society. The prophet Ezekiel's words "I will overturn, overturn, overturn,...until he come whose right it is"^{Ezek. 21:27;} accurately describe the impact of the Christ, immovable Truth, upon the traditions and unenlightened thinking that bind and blind mankind.

Yet sincere people often confuse loyalty to the transforming Christ with fanatical fidelity to entrenched attitudes and opinions. They mistakenly attempt to be adamant about subjects quite properly open to various interpretations, one of which may be no more basically right than another. In other words, they take absolute stands on relative matters. When various opinions or different choices are permissible, as in a society that values democratic procedures, for example, it is nearer right—and more Godlike—to be temperate than to be dogmatic or brittle.

Christian Science shows that the key to helping humanity is always a vivid consciousness that God is Love. This very fact requires the student of Christian Science to distinguish between absolute demands and relative opportunities, and to be faithful to both. On the one hand, he sees that it is necessary to base his life and outlook on the absolute fact that God, Spirit, Love, is All and that evil or matter must therefore be unreal. He must be consistent and invariable about these basic teachings. On the other hand, this undeviating truthfulness of vision, holding the good as real and God-supported and the evil as unreal, passing, gives him forbearance and an eye for good in human matters. It enables him to be wisely appreciative of the many, various opinions growing out of individual tastes and customs.

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