Article November 2, 1998 Issue

Claim your exemptions

Don't suffer needlessly.

By Judith Haugan Ryan

One year, my husband and I neglected to claim an income tax exemption that was rightfully ours. Fortunately, we discovered the error when preparing out taxes the following year, and we received a refund. Taking credit for our exemptions as spiritual ideas of God works much the same way. As God's child, made in His image and likeness man is perfect and immortal. God's man, therefore, is exempt from age and decay, exempt from disease, exempt from danger, even exempt from death. Science and Health states, "Immortality, exempt from age or decay, has a glory of its own,—the radiance of Soul" (p. 247).

Just as we claimed our deserved tax exemption, we each need to claim our rightful exemption from discord, realizing that our true selfhood as God's child is immortal and spiritual. We need to actively claim our freedom from anything unlike God, good. It is God's infinite goodness that allows us to make this claim, and governs its operation.

As the Way-shower, Christ Jesus proved that the laws of God can and do have an impact on our current experience. By countless instances of healing, Jesus showed that God's man is exempt from sin and disease. By feeding five thousand people with a small amount of food, he showed that God's man is exempt from lack and want. By walking on the water and by stilling a raging storm, he showed that God's man is exempt from the limiting or destructive laws of the physical universe. By raising from the dead Jairus's daughter, the widow's son, and Lazarus, and by effecting his own resurrection, he showed that man is exempt from death itself.

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