Editorial April 12, 1975 Issue

How Truth Resolves Problems

Geoffrey J. Barratt

God is seen in Christian Science as infinite, omniscient, and omnipotent Truth. He knows only His own nature and this knowing makes up the spiritual man and universe, the only creation. Isn't it natural for us to ask, then, How can such an apparently transcendent Deity help us with our mundane problems? Mary Baker Eddy explains in her book Unity of Good: "Truth is God, and in God's law. This law declares that Truth is All, and there is no error. This law of Truth destroys every phase of error. To gain a temporary consciousness of God's law is to feel, in a certain finite human sense, that God comes to us and pities us; but the attainment of the understanding of His presence, through the Science of God, destroys our sense of imperfection, or of His absence, through a diviner sense that God is all true consciousness; and this convinces us that, as we get still nearer Him, we must forever lose our own consciousness of error."^{ Un., p. 4;}

To enlightened human sense, God, or Truth, is seen to come to us and help us. He directs us intelligently, heals us, meets our everyday needs. How? By remaining just what He is: unconfined and ever-present Truth. Our understanding and admission of true being is equal to overcoming any evil—in effect, any claim of Truth's finiteness—that may seem to disorder our system or affairs. We "lose our own consciousness of error," for there is nothing to it, actually, other than our consciousness of it. A passage later in the same book reinforces the point: "Destroy the mental sense of the disease, and the disease itself disappears. Destroy the sense of sin, and sin itself disappears."^{ ibid., p. 9;}

Because God remains eternally what He is—Truth—we always have access to truths to correct untruths such as deprivation, injustice, suffering. We find when we get still nearer Truth that it's not bleak abstraction, but is practical divine Love. Mrs. Eddy's discovery shows us how to get nearer to Truth—by consistently replacing mortal errors with immortal truths, truths of God's omnipotence and man's perfection.

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