Who has the advantage? The United States or the Soviet Union? A man or a woman? Toyota or Lee Iacocca? The Chicago Bears football team or the New England Patriots? It's a subject politicians and television anchormen debate, Hollywood dramatizes, Zurich assesses in international currencies, and newspapers headline. But who does have the advantage?

Do you have the advantage? Or are you fighting to get it, groping to hang on to it, or waiting helplessly while others determine it? The question implies a "one or the other" answer: you either have the advantage or you're at a disadvantage. The question is also typical of the way people often reason—from a strictly material basis, a basis devoid of God. There's little stability or reliability in such reasoning and very little peace or comfort!

But what happens if we ask the question from a strictly spiritual basis? (A basis that, as the articles in this magazine attest, is utterly practical, real, present, useful.) What happens is that we begin with God. God who is All. God who is good. Good that is all. Now ask the question beginning with God. Who has the advantage? It becomes an "unquestion." God, good, is simply All. Material circumstances cease to be either an advantage or a disadvantage. Neither condition is accurate. So to calculate one's well-being from this basis would not be safe. Ultimately, advantage must be seen in wholly spiritual terms—the advantage of divine Spirit over matter. And only as we understand this spiritual viewpoint can we be safe and secure.

Christ Jesus proved the complete practicality of this. He proved that material conditions were without real substance in the light of the spiritual truth God was revealing. Material conditions never gave him an advantage or placed him at a disadvantage, for he acknowledged God alone as substance and power and acted from a strictly spiritual basis. He proved this when he fed a crowd of more than five thousand with enough food available for only a handful of people, and when he provided from a fish's mouth the money needed to pay a tax, and when he healed diseases that would be considered incurable and raised the dead without any material aid.

Now, if Jesus' spiritual stability and healing ability are viewed as merely personal or exclusive to him, they remain remote and perhaps of only historical interest. But Jesus never intended his spiritual power to be simply the subject of sermons—it was meant to be lived and practiced on this very day in 1986. His intention could not be more explicit than in his command to us to do the works that he did. ^{See John 14:12 .} He knew that the truth he had brought to mankind would eventually be taught so as to make it a universal, demonstrable way of healing and living. He promised, "The Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you." ^{John 14:26.} The Christian Scientist believes that this promised teaching, which explains the divine power demonstrated by Christ Jesus, is revealed in Christian Science, the Science of Christ. It is fully explained in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy. Its explanation is wholly demonstrable—healing works being the vital proof that Christian Science is all it claims to be.

The world would have repeatedly put Mrs. Eddy at a disadvantage in her discovery and founding of Christian Science. She was a woman at the turn of the century in a male-dominated world. She had to withstand attacks on the rights of her organization in high-powered and unscrupulous lawsuits. She had to find adherents of her teachings in the midst of a largely uncomprehending world. Starting from a penniless beginning, she went on to publish books, periodicals, and finally a worldwide newspaper. She founded a unique system of government for her Church that would protect her original intent for it throughout the years ahead, even when she would no longer be personally present to guide the Church. Succeeding in the face of all these disadvantages through her total reliance on God, Mrs. Eddy could well write, "I learned long ago that the world could neither deprive me of something nor give me anything...." ^{Miscellaneous Writings, p. 281.}

We can find, through the teachings of Christian Science, the same God-given spiritual perspective. It was this perspective that armed Jesus with the confidence that every situation he faced was under the government of God. So today there is no disadvantage in turning wholeheartedly to God to resolve any challenge we may now be facing. This is not turning to God merely to "use" Him to change our present material condition. It is turning to God to understand the present spiritual condition and bring it out in our experience. Then we understand that our advantage is our spiritual prerogative to be just what God is causing us to be. Science and Health tells us, "God is not moved by the breath of praise to do more than He has already done, nor can the infinite do less than bestow all good, since He is unchanging wisdom and Love." And later on the same page, "Prayer cannot change the Science of being, but it tends to bring us into harmony with it." ^{Science and Health, p. 2.}

It is not that we seek to rid ourselves of one material position, called disadvantage, to attain another material position, called advantage. The only true advantage we can ever have in any situation is understanding and demonstrating the spiritual fact. An experience I had illustrates, in a small way, how this is so. I was enrolled in a large university, taking a course on publishing. The class was divided into small groups, and part of each group's assignment was to publish a book. The first task was to decide on a subject. Much to my dread, and despite my protests, my group decided on a pornographic topic. I was outnumbered nine to one. My first thought was to ask the director to place me in another group (a move from one material position of disadvantage to another material position of possible advantage). But before I had a chance to talk to the director, I heard by the grapevine that other groups were contemplating topics not much better. (Was there an advantageous position to be found?)

Just about this time there were terrible brush fires threatening several communities in California. As I listened to a news report the thought came to me, If my community were in the path of a fire, of what advantage would it be for me to leave my town and move to another that was also in the path of the fire? Would the other town be any safer while the fire was left burning? The solution would be to put the fire out and save every town. In the same way, I saw that in my situation it would be of no advantage for me to move from one group to another. The disadvantage was not in the group but in the "fire," the belief that man was a mere material mortal, inclined to things debased and immoral. The disadvantage was in believing that man could deny and act contrary to his God-given purity, innocence, sinlessness, as God's child. I prayed not to change groups but to change my perception of man—from a material to a spiritual basis. I prayed for the humility to accept what man must be as God's child—the very expression of Principle and Love. It wasn't easy. But it was easier than allowing the fire to burn out of control. Turning to the teachings of the Bible and of Science and Health, I found the spiritual perspective. I eventually believed—really understood —that man is attracted only to good. So my group and I could only want what was worthwhile and spiritually elevating.

Without a word from me the group changed the topic. They decided to do a book on womanhood and what it really is. The book was very insightful—as one young man in the group later confessed: "For the first time I realized I've never known what true womanhood is. I still don't know what it is, but I know it isn't what I've believed all these years." That recognition was a point of tremendous advantage. It hinted at his natural ability to discover the facts of spiritual identity and individuality that constitute our true being as God's image and likeness.

Every situation we'll ever face is amenable to the law of God. This law is the present spiritual condition. It is a provable condition. Understanding and demonstrating this is our unassailable position of advantage.