Perhaps you've tried to love people in spite of their faults and had the whole situation collapse on you. You may have felt guilty because you thought you were covering up their wrong actions in order to love them. Or you may have found that in your efforts to do good you put yourself in such an unprincipled position, you were vulnerable to being used or betrayed.

How can we love with integrity and at the same time be protected? We can as we gain the right sense of man in Christian Science. The only true concept is that God made him as the very expression of Himself, the idea of perfect divine Mind. We need to replace the false concept of man as a sinning mortal with the true.

How do we do this so we can live up to the standard Jesus laid down—"Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you"? ^{Matt. 5:44;} By being alert to the nature of personal sense—the sense that identity is separate from God and materially formed. This false sense would have us straighten out mankind's troubles by doing something to mortals. Personal sense argues that nothing can be solved unless so-called mortal man is corrected, influenced, indulged, or even eliminated. The hope is that this will somehow get rid of evil and leave only good.

Of course, this can never bring a lasting solution, because man is not a sinful mortal. It is the false sense of man, "the old man," personality claiming to be individuality, that must be dealt with and finally eliminated from consciousness.

The personality that seems to be man's identity is a mixture of false beliefs—beliefs of heredity, beliefs about the influence of environment on makeup and character. We are said to be like blank sheets of paper until mortal mind, the belief of mind in matter, writes its story about us. But Mary Baker Eddy, who discovered and founded Christian Science, writes, "This material sinful personality, which we misname man, is what St. Paul terms 'the old man and his deeds,' to be 'put off.'"^{No and Yes, p. 27;} And elsewhere she says explicitly, "Personality is not the individuality of man."^{Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 491;}

Man's individuality is his Christly identity as the son of God. Therefore the Christian demand is to separate the material, personal sense of identity from the true, Christly sense. Mrs. Eddy tells us, "To impersonalize scientifically the material sense of existence—rather than cling to personality—is the lesson of to-day."^{Miscellaneous Writings, p. 310.}

Our scientific impersonalization reflects the warm activity of spiritual love. We are seeing through the material concept and perceiving how God has actually created everything. We don't really know people until we love them spiritually—see their true Christlike nature instead of the corporeal personality. Only spiritual good is real to divine Love.

A Christian Science practitioner who moved to a large city ran into a severe problem with a local public service company. The situation was so bad in the area that it was a frequent topic of conversation and of newspaper articles. The inefficiency of the company interfered with her practice of Christian Science.

She prayed, realizing that nothing could disrupt God's work. Things would improve temporarily, but there would be severe trouble again.

One day, after a particularly fruitless conversation with a company supervisor, she cried out to herself in desperation, "Father, what do I need to do?" The answer came instantly: "Love them." At that moment she not only didn't feel capable of loving them, she didn't feel they deserved her love.

Suddenly she realized she had been identifying those in the company as part of a big, faceless personality opposing her and her legitimate efforts to do good. She had been thinking of them as mortals who had to be straightened out. She realized that healing could not take place until, through Christian love, the material, personal sense of those in the company was replaced with the true, spiritual concept of man.

As she began to feel a love for these people and for the spiritual truths that governed them, most of the troubles were resolved. But more important to her was the clearer understanding she gained of how the power of Christian love impersonalizes evil and heals—reveals the true idea, the Christly identity that is totally lovable.

Christ Jesus didn't expect us to love the unlovely material personality claiming to be man. He proved the fruits of separating the belief in material identity from our concept of man. As we pray, we can know that the healing Christ is perpetually working in us, destroying the sense of man as material personality and revealing man's Christly individuality.