Article October 30, 1995 Issue

No shelter for resentment

Denise R. Cupp

Sometimes events happen that arouse great resentment. Most of the time it seems that these events were brought into our lives without our permission, often by another individual or group of individuals. These events may appear to have hurt us greatly, changed our lives for the worse, and left us feeling powerless to help ourselves. But are we? Resentment can be healed. Through prayer, we can see right through resentment and challenge the very circumstances that seem to separate us from God's love.

If anyone had cause to feel justified in resenting others, it was Christ Jesus, hanging upon the cross, bearing the world's hatred of the truth he had so lovingly expressed. He had walked among all sorts of people, loving them, striving to help them to uplift their sense of God and man, forgiving sins, and healing sickness and death. Truly this was the best individual humanity would see upon the earth, and he certainly did not deserve what was done to him. But did Jesus give in to feelings of resentment? No. He forgave and prayed for those who were persecuting him even while they were doing so. He went on to prove the effectiveness of this prayer by rising above the sense of death and doom the world had thrown upon him. How was Jesus able to resist the temptation to resent? What was the basis of his proof of the power of spiritual love?

Christian Science helps us find the answers by mining the inspiration of the Bible, which tells us that God is Spirit, not a corporeal being. He is all good—ever active and omnipotent. In Acts we read that Paul said, speaking of God, "In him we live, and move, and have our being" (17:28). In Him. There is nothing else. If God is Spirit and man is created in His image and likeness, man is spiritual, not a material being. And if God is all and He is Spirit, there cannot be two truths—one spiritual and one material. The fact is that Spirit, God, is All-in-all; His creation is the only reality. It is a misconception about God's man (and what other man is there?) that would lead us to believe that man is a material being with limitations, faults, cruelties, and disabilities. In looking away from that false sense to the true nature of God and His creation (and what else is there?), we begin to see that there is no individual or power that could ever harm us.

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