Editorial April 21, 1973 Issue

Self-respect versus Self-righteousness

Carl J. Welz

Self-respect is an ingredient essential to our happiness and health. Whatever our position in life or our activity, we need to know clearly who we are and to have respect for ourselves in a way that commands respect from others for that self. But if our respect for ourselves is to have the backing of Truth, we must understand who we really are. Paul wrote, "If a man think himself to be something, when he is nothing, he deceiveth himself."^{Gal. 6:3;}

We can never be something outside of the Christ. The Christ, Christian Science teaches, is the true idea of God, whom man reflects. God is Life, Truth, and Love. As we understand ourselves to be God's reflection, and as we live our human life in demonstration of the Christ, Truth, we express the true idea.

Disease is no part of the true idea of Life, Truth, and Love. It is no part of the real man. It is no part of our true selfhood. Sin also is no part of the real man and no part of our true selfhood. If we understand something of our true identity as God's idea, and if we devote our human energies to the business of living up to the ideal of that selfhood, we can have respect for ourselves as earnest Christians. And as we come to understand the relationship to our health of our devotion to life in Christ, Truth, we gain respect for ourselves as Scientists of the Christ, Christian Scientists. But insofar as we think of ourselves as mortals trying to be better than other mortals, we have more self-righteousness than self-respect, and our pleas for healing lack the ring of truth.

Send a comment to the editors

NEXT IN THIS ISSUE

Editorial

After Thorns, a Royal Diadem