Editorial August 4, 1980 Issue

The hope that doesn't topple

GEOFFREY J. BARRATT

The optimist is more appealing than the pessimist. Hope is a very attractive state of thought, an outlook worth cultivating. But if it doesn't stand on a broad spiritual basis, it can topple, like a badly proportioned vase resting on a too narrow base. Not just a naive expecting of mortals to be better or of events to go better (this can lead to a neglect of things that need to be dealt with), the hope that Christian Science engenders comes from knowing that man, along with all true action, is the emanation of divine Love.

Hope for future improvement must come out of the scientific certainty of divine perfection now. If hope is not arrived at via spiritualization, it may be false hope, a ploy of mortal mind to delay progress. The hope that is steady and safe hinges on the fact of Spirit's immediate allness. It lies on the conviction that the whole cosmos, including man, is inseparable from this allness. Hope is a human state, and to be reliable it must rest on divine Truth. Mary Baker Eddy tells us, "The feasibility and immobility of Christian Science unveil the true idea,—namely, that earth's discords have not the reality of Mind in the Science of being; and this idea—dematerializing and spiritualizing mortals— turns like the needle to the pole all hope and faith to God, based as it is on His omnipotence and omnipresence." ^{No and Yes, p. 10;}

Things go wrong for mankind because of our general wrong thinking, and will continue to do so in the measure of this deficiency. But we can't, as scientific Christians, leave ourselves and mankind with our wrong thinking. We must recognize that all creation evidences the intelligence of immortal Mind, or it simply isn't real creation. This gives us an expectation of good far exceeding a mortal psychological state, because it stands on genuine spiritual insight and leads to demonstration. Any hope that springs from little more than the shaky reasoning of a mortal mentality is best grown out of, and as soon as possible. The safely hopeful person is the one who accepts the spiritual demands inseparable from the genuine expectation of good.

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