Article April 10, 1989 Issue

You can revise the past

People generally believe that what's done is done, and the past can't be changed. But perhaps there's another way of dealing with human history.

Elaine R. Follis

Do you ever find yourself wishing you could change the past or at least not let it adversely affect the present? Then perhaps you'll be intrigued, as I have been, with this statement Mrs. Eddy makes in her book Retrospection and Introspection: "The human history needs to be revised, and the material record expunged."^{Ret., p. 22.} One's human history, the sum of one's past daily experience, appears to be a blending of good and evil elements, with each side struggling for dominance. But this sense of life needs to be revised—literally, seen again. We need to take a different view of the thoughts, deeds, and events that constitute our human record. And as we do, we're able to correct and redeem that record.

Christian Science teaches that God, good, is the only real power. Divine good is eternal and infinite; and since it has no beginning or end, no limits, it is also omnipresent. Like light and darkness, good and evil are mutually exclusive. They never mingle, and both cannot occupy the same place at the same time. As Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mrs. Eddy explains, "God, good, being ever present, it follows in divine logic that evil, the suppositional opposite of good, is never present."^{Science and Health, p. 72.} When a re-view of any past scenario where good and evil seemed to operate together is brought into focus through the lens of Christian Science, we begin to find the evil disappearing—vanishing as the illusion it is—and what remains is the good, the actual.

This expunging of the material record shows us that discordant events and personal trials never really took place. Note that in this process the good is not lost. In fact, it comes to light in its full original strength and purity, untouched and unsullied by materiality. Only the evil is eliminated, because it has no real origin or existence in the perfect universe of God's creation. It was never real to begin with but was an illusion, a lie. And so when we re-vise, look again, at our human history, we realize that in truth we've never been anything but blessed, harmonious, and free—the spiritual likeness of God.

Send a comment to the editors

NEXT IN THIS ISSUE

Article

What constitutes motherhood?