Article January 1, 2001 ISSUE

Need a new image?

by Fred Bidault—Nice, France

At the beginning of high school I was a bad student. That was the image I had of myself. I'd say, ‟What good is studying?” I talked with my friends during class, and I was often kicked out for being too disruptive.

I goofed off the whole first year and part of the second. I had bad grades. Then, in the middle of that year, I took some math courses with a college student who explained what a person would do with math, down the road a bit. So I started thinking to myself, ″This is really good.” But everything seemed to indicate that I wouldn't make it into my senior year, and I was very discouraged.

That's when I went to talk it over with my Sunday School teacher. I told him that I was beginning to get interested in what I was doing, and I really didn't feel like doing the year over. I wanted to understand better what we had started to learn about God's love for His children, and the help that prayer can give us.

You see, there was school, everyday life, including my friends on one side. And Sunday School on the other. They were two separate worlds for me. At the very least, the image I wanted to present of myself wasn't the same in these two different worlds. In high school, if you want to be cool, you didn't talk about God and spiritual things. That's the way I felt then. Also, I thought that in order to be accepted by your friends you couldn't be a good student.

But at this point I really had a desire to study the Bible and Science and Health to solve my school problems. The reason why I turned to these books goes back a few years, when I was still in junior high school.

Back then, I wasn't going to church anymore. Religion was no part of my life. One day I was run over by a motor-bike and taken to the hospital. I was told later that I was unconscious in the ambulance. But, strangely, my recollection is that I was praying a lot. In the hospital, I underwent heavy surgery. Although I left the hospital soon after, I wasn't able to go back to school for several months.

When I started getting better, I asked my father to give me a copy of Science and Health. He gave me one and started to explain what's in it. As he was talking, I felt really happy. I began studying the book, and haven't stopped since. In its pages, and in the Bible, I find answers to many of my questions.

Fast forward again to high school, and how I dealt with my school problems. I prayed to understand better that God is present all the time and that, in His presence, we lack nothing. I realized it was natural for me to be intelligent. And I became certain that the effort I was making at school would be rewarded. My ideas started to change. The image I had of my teachers changed also. I realized teachers were not who I thought they were: they're not there to criticize us, to make us fail, or to bully us. Finally, I made it to my senior year of high school.

At the beginning of that year, my grades went down again, but there was something that had changed in the way I was thinking about things. I couldn't go back to how I used to be. The little I had understood of the divine intelligence, of what God is, and my relationship to Him, had given me the confidence and the courage to study in school. I'd do my homework, then I'd go to class to take the test, knowing that I would have all the ideas I needed. It was as simple as that. As I sat with the test in front of me, I no longer thought, ″I don't understand any of this, I'm worthless.” I would stay with the idea that I'm always God's child, so I've inherited His intelligence.

I had started to listen to the teachers. I didn't limit myself to the words of what I was studying, but I was able to focus on the content of the classes. And one day, in the middle of the year, I had the best grade in the class in math. The news spread like wildfire in the school because it didn't jibe with the rebellious image I had of being a bad student. And I continued to do well.

And I learned that a lot of teachers, too, see beyond the outside appearance students present. When you feel good about yourself, people feel good about you. They see right through the outside image, and find what's true about you.

And that's what I found — my true self.

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