When I was a youngster in Sunday School, certain Bible stories were as much a part of my week as baseball in the summer and basketball in the winter. David and Goliath, Samson and Delilah, Joseph and his coat of many colors were a few. Jesus and his great deeds were central, of course. Often it was the most colorful parts of these stories that captured my interest. As I grew up, some of the details and implications of Bible stories became more important and clearer to me.

Samson—to take one of those stories—is certainly a figure for modern times. He was a powerful man, so powerful he killed a young lion with his bare hands. I wouldn't be surprised if kids today compared him to Conan the Barbarian!

Samson was someone who went after what he wanted. He wasn't hesitant to go to war to get it. After fighting, he would name the place of the battle and then give thanks to God for victory. Whether God was truly behind all his victories or sanctioned his methods was another question! Samson in the Old Testament book of Judges seems like an ancient legend, and the past is probably where the story would stay if it didn't teach such a powerful moral lesson in the midst of the lusty living and violent conflict in the world today.

The Bible makes clear that the spiritual progress that moves people beyond warriorism and crude self-preservation to Christly courage and love requires many victories over sin. Not all victories over sin, however, take place in dramatic and public combat.

Samson's undoing began quietly. At first it might not have even been very noticeable. And the weakening of good motives, even great strength of character, frequently begins that way. A small fear is tolerated—we learn to detour around it. A little hurt is pushed aside—we don't give it much thought, at least until the person we believe has hurt us does it again! Maybe we rationalize that our own "minor" ambition or greed is hardly anything compared to the larger, more dramatic excesses of business and government people who haven't lived up to public trust. Perhaps our discontent is just a vague, unarticulated sense that we don't have what is owed to us.

Yet as these feelings build—even before we realize how cluttered our thought has become—they stir feelings of alienation. This was at least a part of Samson's dilemma. He was restless, unsatisfied. Here's sin in its incipiency. Later come the beguiling accouterments of flashy temptations, sparkling arguments, and illusory rewards. At first, though, sin often isn't bright and dazzling; it's dull and gray. It's tempting not to do much about it until it blooms into its more visible and troubling aspects.

But "dull" times may be a signal to be active in prayer. Gray, depressing periods may be just the time for renewal and accomplishment. We can decide not to go along with dull, routine feelings of sin and discontent. We aren't what alienated, sinful sense says we are—limited, inadequate, vulnerable, not loved nearly enough.

We have the prerogative to change the way we think and the way we live. This ability comes from spiritual self-knowledge—recognizing we are God's expression. The honest acknowledgment of man as God's idea isn't, however, a passive, "religious" thing. It is an active, decisive commitment that wakes us up spiritually and moves us in healing, transforming, joy-producing ways. It is a new thing, the always new thing, that seeks innovative ways to overcome sin. This is where the direction and inspiration of Christ Jesus' life cut through human despair. He witnessed it all—disease, cruel ambition, poverty, oppression. But he wasn't alienated, not from God and not from his fellowman. He was awake to God, he was alive to divine Life because he knew he was his Father's Son. This equipped him with authority to act, to heal, to prevail against sin.

This moral and spiritual vigor is ours, too. If we aren't satisfied, we shouldn't just ignore such feelings, or justify them because we're too little of this or too little of that or because the breaks never came when we needed them most; or because circumstances of birth and family ... or ... or ... or .... These are the arguments of sin—enslaving sin, claiming that we're separated from God, from divine good; and it just isn't so. We are God's creation, spiritual, and responsive to Him. If it seems otherwise, it is a lie, and recognizing this deception for what it is, is the act of a person soon to be free.

Sin claims easy satisfaction, but it can never fulfill the promise. Satisfaction comes as we awake to our real selfhood as God's man, unleashing the power to think truthfully, to act out of God-given love, to persevere because we have the strength of divine Spirit. Mrs. Eddy writes in her book Miscellaneous Writings: "He that seeketh aught besides God, loseth in Life, Truth, and Love. All men shall be satisfied when they 'awake in His likeness,' and they never should be until then. Human pride is human weakness. Self-knowledge, humility, and love are divine strength."

The difference between the tragic end of Samson and the victory of the Master, Christ Jesus, is immense. Samson's life didn't need to be a tragedy. But the differing outcome represents the contrast between looking for satisfaction in material conquests and finding satisfaction in spiritual self-knowledge. To recognize the difference and to choose to think as free men and women is to walk in the way of the saving light of Christ, Truth.

Michael D. Rissler