Article August 10, 1987 Issue

Stop criticizing!

A physical healing comes as Christian love replaces faultfinding.

Barbara Juergens Fox

A New bank building was going up across from my office. I watched as enormous I-beams were delivered and hoisted into place. Suddenly I recalled Jesus' question "Why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?"^{Matt. 7:3.} and I laughed. What a contrast between those huge beams and the specks of dust stirred up by the workmen! I thought how often I'd ignored my own sizable shortcomings while I fumed over someone else's peccadilloes.

As Christian Science points out, there's one beam that claims to block the vision of all mankind. It is the false belief that life, substance, and intelligence are in matter. This mistaken sense presents man as an imperfect mortal, subject to all sorts of moral, mental, and physical deficiencies. It is ignorant of the spiritual fact that man is really the incorporeal child of God, perfect as the Father, complete, pure, intelligent.

We all know that the mistakes and inadequacies on the human scene are legion, but criticizing a person, an ethnic group, or another's nationality often accomplishes nothing in solving problems and promoting harmony. Hard as it may seem at times, we have to separate human failings from true identity. Error, or evil, is no part of the man of God's creating; man, being spiritual, doesn't include a single erroneous element. What needs correcting is a false view of things. We need to remove the beam in our eye—to reject persistently the entrenched belief that man is mortal, that material personality with its shortcomings is real. This prepares thought to accept the truth of being, which overcomes a willful tendency to criticize.

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