Article January 18, 1982 Issue

Seeing beyond surface appearances

EARL E. HARRIS

One fall evening shortly after dark, I heard the scuffling of feet and mingled voices on the front porch, then a knock at the door. I turned on the light and opened the door, and there stood several of the most desperate looking rogues I had ever seen. They did not threaten me, but their shouts sent me scurrying to do their bidding. I had no anxiety, for beyond their frightful appearance, I was able to see mentally the happy, expectant faces of the neighborhood children. It was Halloween.

How easy it was to see through those ugly masks. Why can't we develop the same facility in seeing the true man beyond the untrue mortal mask that hides another's real identity? Christ Jesus illustrated the possibilities. With spiritual sense, he saw God's likeness, and this true view of man and the universe enabled him to accomplish his mighty healing works. His instruction was, "Judge not according to the appearance, but judge righteous judgment."^{John 7:24.}

When we seek this righteous, Christly discernment that sees beyond material appearances, we are undertaking a full-time occupation, a new way of life. Our starting point as Christian Scientists is this simple but profound statement of Jesus: "It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life."^{6:63 .} The actual living of what this statement implies is the hinge upon which the door to true being and eternal life swings open. Unless we learn to differentiate between God's spiritual creation of harmony and perfection and the material world of "the flesh," our hopes and aspirations will be hampered by a false concept of existence. To accept the joys, sorrows, stress, strife, and struggles of temporal life as the norm is, in effect, to cut ourselves off from reality.

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