Article October 31, 1977 Issue

True Understanding-How Important It Is!

WILLIAM DOUGLAS ALDER

On the wall behind the Readers' desk in our branch Church of Christ, Scientist, these words from the Bible are painted: "With all thy getting get understanding." Prov. 4:7; Every time I enter the auditorium, I glance at that quotation, and it never fails to inspire me. There is joy in understanding God and the real man, His reflection.

Christ Jesus taught man's sonship with God, and Mrs. Eddy shows clearly and convincingly in the Christian Science textbook, Science and Health, the coincidence between the divine Spirit and the real man, made in Spirit's likeness. We can practically apply this understanding of our true identity and coincidence with the Father. Convinced of our real being as God's children—spiritual and not material—we can go forward to demonstrate that the loved child of God is not involved in wrongdoing, sickness, or death.

When we look around us, what do we see or think we see? Mostly what we expect and perhaps fear, which is frequently sickness and sin—unless we are on guard to perceive the truth of man. It is only material thinking that sees evil and would tell us this is the truth. Spiritual understanding teaches us how to reason scientifically from a different basis. Mrs. Eddy states, as the sixth tenet of Christian Science, "And we solemnly promise to watch, and pray for that Mind to be in us which was also in Christ Jesus; to do unto others as we would have them do unto us; and to be merciful, just, and pure." Science and Health, p. 497; We therefore dismiss this belief of sin, sickness, and death for what the belief is—a dream without substance and completely untrue.

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