Article January 24, 2000 Issue

Do things or thoughts rule us?

Depending on one's possessions for happiness is risky business.

By Clifford Kapps Eriksen

A visit to celebrate with family and friends. It was supposed to be a time of joy. My wife and I were far from joyous, however, when someone broke into our car and stole everything in it food, clothing, gifts, even our dog's bed. I felt overwhelmed at first, but the lesson I learned taught me more and brought me greater joy than any other family celebration.

Distraught about the theft and fretful about the impact it would have on our already strained finances, I soon fell seriously ill. Treatment through prayer, however, by a Christian Science practitioner helped to lift my thinking above self-pity and the condemnation of whoever had taken our possessions. It helped me realize a simple, but profound, spiritual truth: thoughts, not things, govern man. In fact, spiritual thoughts from God, or divine ideas not material objects constitute the real substance of man's being.

I began to see that behind each of the stolen items lay a spiritual idea: kindness, generosity, thoughtfulness, beauty, color, form, and so forth. Material things come and go, but the spiritual ideas and qualities they represent originate in God. Consequently, they can never be diminished, destroyed or, in truth, stolen. Which is not to say that one should ever ignore something as serious as stealing. But for the first time in my life, I recognized how much more important it is to cherish spiritual ideas than to worry about material things.

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