Editorial January 5, 1987 Issue

The distance from doubt to inspiration

Allison W. Phinney, Jr.

When some of us were growing up, there was a particular arrangement of mirrors in certain clothing stores that was fascinating. There was a mirror on each side at an angle and one in the middle. If you stood in just the right place, you saw an endless repetition of yourself. Every image in the long line was smaller than the one before. And finally the image disappeared in the distance.

Doubt, it seems to me, has a similar effect. When we seriously doubt that there is real meaning to existence or when we doubt the presence of good, or God, it leads to a diminishing sense of life and selfhood.

A reasonable kind of questioning can of course lead to stronger understanding. Mary Baker Eddy, who discovered and founded Christian Science, encouraged original thinking. She felt this was essential to spiritual understanding. In an intriguing chapter in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures called "Some Objections Answered" she grapples forthrightly with some of the objections raised to believing in Christian Science. And she incorporated sixty pages or so of answers to quite tough and skeptical questions in Miscellaneous Writings.

Send a comment to the editors

NEXT IN THIS ISSUE

Editorial

Finding our life in Christ