Article April 16, 1979 Issue

Don't covet; accept!

PATIENCE M. CANHAM

We may have watched someone we admire and thought, "I wish I had his faith." Or maybe it was her courage we coveted. Such thoughts are indeed a form of coveting, even though they may seem like worthy aspirations.

Without a desire for goodness and a genuine effort to live in line with the desire, no one can genuinely progress. Mrs. Eddy writes in the Christian Science textbook, "Every step towards goodness is a departure from materiality, and is a tendency towards God, Spirit."Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 213; The mistake is to label goodness as personal and not see it as an expression of the good that is God. To think in terms of his kindness, her gentleness, is to focus our attention on persons and not necessarily on God, the source of all goodness.

Christ Jesus was emphatic on this point. When someone addressed him as "good Master," Jesus replied clearly: "Why callest thou me good? there is none good but one, that is, God."Mark 10:17, 18; Jesus was not denying his goodness, the unique manifestation of God in him. He was refusing to see it as self-generated, personal. He was asking that people look past the human manifestation of good to God, the source of all the goodness there is.

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