Editorial September 15, 1980 Issue

Being an audience for Truth

GEOFFREY J. BARRATT

Were someone telling us the facts about a situation needing our decision, we'd be unwise to refuse to listen and act accordingly.

In the broader framework of working out the problem of being—gaining a comprehension of God, Truth, and His man and universe—it is much more gravely unwise not to listen to Truth. What would block our ears is mortal egotism. The false "I" of mortal consciousness thinks it "knows," is sure it knows. Listening to Truth involves putting down mortal egotism and silencing its nonsensical chatter about matter, finiteness, imperfection, doom.

Whether we do silence mortal thought and listen to Truth is very much up to us individually. "The effects of Christian Science are not so much seen as felt. It is the 'still, small voice' of Truth uttering itself. We are either turning away from this utterance, or we are listening to it and going up higher,"^{Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 323;} Mary Baker Eddy says. If we're not listening to the truth of God's infinite goodness and man's perfection, then we are very likely attending to error—the information that seems to come to us through the five personal senses, telling us of man's finity, his flaws, his suffering and mortality. The basic, though supposititious, originator of error is mortal mind. It is mortal mind that is the deceiver; the carnal senses are its product.