Editorial May 4, 1981 Issue

Right there is love

BEULAH M. ROEGGE

Those who look to find causes for disease speak out increasingly against the harmful effects of negative emotions. Doctors warn against harboring feelings of anger, grief, and despair. Many people strive to help others get rid of these feelings through humane and sometimes helpful, if perhaps limited, ways. But a few popular methods used today are bizarre indeed. Certain self-awareness and encounter groups striving to pull these feelings out of their hidden places may be actually damaging.

"The pent-up elements of mortal mind need no terrible detonation to free them," writes Mrs. Eddy. "Envy, rivalry, hate need no temporary indulgence that they be destroyed through suffering; they should be stifled from lack of air and freedom."^{Miscellaneous Writings, p. 356.} Christian Science offers a premise from which one may proceed for stifling these feelings. The premise is that negative, destructive emotions are not legitimate, that they have no source, and the man of God's creating cannot entertain them. God is Love, and the healthful feelings that come from Love are reflected as the natural expressions of man. By recognizing divine Love as man's real source and the source of all genuine feeling, people are capable of excluding the negative "elements of mortal mind." And they find that those not excluded can be eliminated by the same recognition and without emotional blowups.

Furthermore, Christian Science teaches that the ability to love is much more than just our own ability. It is the ability divine Love gives man. It is the real man's innate expression of God and the capacity people can cultivate and use as a basis for excluding and dissolving all other feelings.

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