Article January 19, 1981 Issue

Not of the world

JOHN L. SALLINGER III

What if you were asked to select from the columns below the terms you think might best describe yourself? middle-class poor thin overweight glamorous unattractive hyperactive inactive convalescent sick fortunate unlucky happy-go-lucky bad-tempered

To choose any of the above is to accept the world's erroneous view of you. These descriptions present as faithful an image of you as does a wavy carnival mirror! These characteristics don't represent you as you really are—God's image. Nevertheless, whatever you believe to be true of yourself will more or less govern your experience until that belief shifts, or until thought conforms to the Godlike original, the Christly pattern of man. So it's basic wisdom to reject any distorted, worldly picture, and to hold in thought the true image of man. This is requisite for continual spiritual progress. Each of us is in reality God's man now.

Accepting the spiritual fact that you are God's creation, having the actual Mind of Christ—the consciousness of Truth and Love—enables you to confidently assert your true individuality, your unwordliness. "But," you may say, "the world has me all neatly packaged and labeled. How do I get free?" Well, you just don't have to accept false labels, any more than you have to accept that distorted image in the carnival mirror as a true reflection. God's man doesn't fit any falsely prescribed patterns outlined by mortal mind. Man can't be stereotyped; nor can his perfection be distorted. He is genuinely individual, not worldly. Christ Jesus, our Way-shower, opened thought to real individuality when he said, "If ye were of the world, the world would love his own: but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you."^{ John 15:19.}