Do you feel pressured to embark on a course you know is wrong? "Circumstances leave me no choice," you may say. "If I don't lower my standards, I'll lose out on career advancement, business profits, or social acceptance."

But you don't have to do it. God's power is at hand to shore you up with the strength of character you need. The Scriptures abound with accounts of hope regained and victories won through reliance on God's great love. God promises, "Fear thou not; for I am with thee: be not dismayed; for I am thy God: I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness" (Isa. 41:10).

You and I are God's offspring, His image and likeness, as the Bible reveals. Our actual being is spiritual, perfect, uninterruptedly reflecting the Father. Whatever the moral conflict may involve, anyone can turn to Him for help in resolving it. His tenderly patient care is always available to all His children.

The Science of Christ, in harmony with the Bible's spiritual meaning, teaches man's innate purity and wholeness. It shows that God's offspring is not a doomed sinner, an unfortunate creature who has to struggle against overwhelming odds. Man is neither a mortal nor a moral weakling, but upright, spiritual.

How can we prove this and resist the pressure to do wrong? As Christ Jesus illustrates in the Sermon on the Mount, one's thought must be purified; it isn't enough only to try to do the proper thing outwardly. Until the basis of one's thought has been spiritually awakened, purified, and changed, that is, until he or she stops desiring some wrong course, that person has no assurance of being able to withstand that temptation when it comes again.

The Christianly scientific, and therefore the only permanent, way to deal with moral wavering is to start with the fact that there is only one Mind, one absolute intelligence, God. Man is the highest manifestation of Mind, and being Mind's offspring, man must always express Mind's nature, quality, and power. Being spiritual and Godlike, man reflects God's superiority over whatever is evil and harmful. Science and Health points out: "The exterminator of error is the great truth that God, good, is the only Mind, and that the supposititious opposite of infinite Mind—called devil or evil—is not Mind, is not Truth, but error, without intelligence or reality. There can be but one Mind, because there is but one God; and if mortals claimed no other Mind and accepted no other, sin would be unknown" (p. 469).

We help to separate ourselves from sinful impulses if we stop to ask: "What is telling me I want to do wrong? Is this inclination coming from the one Mind, God, who is my source of well-being, who can never impart sinful, illegitimate, unreal desires to me? Or is this the false, carnal mind, which is arguing for my downfall?"

Science and Health calls for an exposure of the "foe in ambush" (see p. 571). The Bible speaks of this foe as the carnal mind. In Science and Health it is also called mortal mind: "Mortal mind is the worst foe of the body, while divine Mind is its best friend" (p. 176). These terms refer to the aggressive but false belief that one has a mind apart from God, a sometimes wayward, self-willed mind that suggests thoughts that clearly are not communications from the one Mind.

If we feel we are on an unstoppable slide toward the same old temptation, we need to acknowledge that we are the child of the one Mind, receptive to our Father's wise and supporting voice. We can declare, until we feel divine strength, that we have no Mind but the one Mind. That we are receptive and obedient to the Father's will.

The struggle in such cases is to silence the carnal mind, which would deny the Christ—the divine, regenerating influence. But the Christ is always victorious, showing humanity the support and joy that come from "casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ" (II Cor. 10:5). So, the struggle is well worth it. For through this holy wrestling we prevail over the temptation of that moment and grow in the understanding of the permanence of our spiritual strength.

There is a squaring of accounts to be made by each person for wrongdoing—and it shouldn't be deferred until the so-called hereafter. Our present thoughts and actions determine whether we experience heaven or hell here and now. Cutting corners, living dangerously may even seem exciting for a time. Eventually, however, we find that such activities are anything but satisfying, because sin in any form brings its own penalty and unhappiness. This suffering stirs us to think more seriously about what we need in order to be free.

It's never too late to turn to God for the way out of moral entanglements. There is no end to God, divine Life and Love. And there is no stopping point for man, His perfect, spiritual reflection. No matter how much one may have slipped off the right path, the moment a misdeed is mentally repented of and the wrong acts themselves are forsaken as the result of spiritual regeneration, the individual is free. Without fail one can rejoice in Christ Jesus' words to the adulterous woman, who if it had not been for him, might have paid for her sin with her life: "Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more" (John 8:11).

Living true to the moral precepts Christ Jesus taught is the best possible defense against the freedom-robbing and misery-bringing tyranny manifested as sin. The Master's teachings are not too lofty to be practical to us right where we are. Jesus met for himself, and showed each one of us how to meet, the onslaughts of the carnal mind. As the Scriptural letter to the Hebrews points out, referring to the Master, "We have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin" (4:15).

Conforming one's life to Truth—not attempting the impossible by trying to conform Truth to one's own desires—defeats evil impulses and enables one to think clean thoughts and to lead an upright, inspiring-for-other-people kind of life. It is our divine right, as the sons of God, to do so. Each and every one of us has the God-derived power to put off sin and be all our heavenly Father made us to be.