Article August 10, 1981 Issue

A pure sense of companionship

VICKI FURGATCH

We all can and must at some time grow in our understanding of a pure sense of companionship. Yet men and women live in a society today that not only condones but encourages sexual promiscuity. How does a young person deal with this situation? Unfortunately, many go along, through peer pressure or under the guise of "It's OK with society," or, even sadder, in the hope that a brief physical encounter will take away their loneliness. But the cliché "Everyone does it" falls flat for those who are striving to uphold their moral upbringing and thinking.

A Christian Scientist I know faced such an issue some time ago. She was able to prove the truth of this statement by Mrs. Eddy: "The destruction of the claims of mortal mind through Science, by which man can escape from sin and mortality, blesses the whole human family."^{Science and Health, p. 103.} She had been dating someone. After each date— and her rejection of his advances—she'd think: "Well, he won't call again, and I'll be better off for it." But he would call, and because she enjoyed his company, she continued to go out with him; but finally she thought, "No more! The situation can and must be healed."

She turned wholeheartedly to God. As she quietly listened to divine Mind, she was led to ponder several ideas. She saw there was a universal and divine law of good existing above, around, and all through her friend and herself; that this law was establishing good, honoring it, and protecting those who honestly attempted to live by it. This law, she realized, doesn't proceed from people, but from God. She knew that Mrs. Eddy says in Science and Health:"... If God, or good, is real, then evil, the unlikeness of God, is unreal."^{Ibid., p. 470.} She knew further that she was striving to uphold and honestly live by God's law of good. Because evil, the unlikeness of God, is unreal, she should and could rightfully separate in her own thought a sense of evil from her friend as no part of her concept of him. She could recognize his true and highest selfhood as the reflection of God. The battle, she saw, was not so much with her friend but with her sense of error.