He wanted me to lie. It was simple stuff, like telling my boss's callers he wasn't there when he just didn't want to take the call. It felt wrong to lie, but it was my first week on a new job, for which I'd only been hired on a trial basis. What if he fired me?

But I couldn't bring myself to lie. Why was I making such a big deal out of what seemed so harmless? My reluctance stemmed from a concept about God I'd always held dear—nor that God is a big person up in the sky who will get mad at me if I lie, but that God is Truth itself.

Truth is one of the names for God that Mary Baker Eddy uses in her book Science and Health, which I'd read all my life. Her descriptions of God made sense to me. It made sense that truly to be God, this divine Being had to be Truth—unwavering, always accurate. I could be certain about the facts of creation, because God made it. So it also made sense that to align myself with that creation, I needed to be truthful.

And the situation with my boss happened at a time in my life when I needed to feel my connection with God, with Truth, consistently. I was raising two young kids on my own and trying hard to turn my life around from what had been a rather speckled past. Without that connection to God, I knew I'd soon drown in the responsibilities I had taken on. In order to keep that lifeline alive, I'd have to live up to my commitment to Truth. To me, this translated into strict honesty at all times.

My irritated boss was convinced I was just being unreasonable. And when I tried to look at things from his point of view, I could see his point. After all, if I always told only the truth about him, there was a lot of damage I could do. When his temper occasionally flared up at my adherence to this standard, I saw I had to do more than just be honest. In order to be fully obedient to Truth, I would have to bring something more to the table.

That something else was love. I'd been exploring the idea (as explained in Science and Health) that along with being Truth, God is also Love. In fact, since God is both Truth and Love, the two must always work together. There is no space where Truth is that Love is not. There is no loving act that is not supported by being truthful, and there is no genuine honesty that is not laced with love.

In order to keep my job, I would have to demonstrate to my boss that honesty was not just some ideal I was sticking to, but something I was doing out of respect for him and for the company. I had to show over time that in effect I was being strictly honest out of love.

This wasn't always easy. He had a short-term need for me to cover for him, and I didn't know if the long-term benefits of my integrity would show in time. One day, though, I hit on the idea of not actually saying he wasn't there when he really was, but instead saying as graciously as possible, "He's unavailable right now. May I take a message for you and be sure he gets back to you as soon as possible?"

At first, my boss thought this would reflect badly on him. But when he saw that the callers responded favorably to my politeness and respect, he agreed that I could work the phones that way.

In the coming months, I worked hard to be reliable to him in all ways, not just in answering the phone. I proved that I could be discreet while still being truthful. As the months went by, he began to appreciate the honesty and care behind my refusal to be dishonest. We even started to joke about my keeping him in line. Ultimately, I was the person my boss always came to when he wanted to know "exactly what's going on around here!"

Taking all the names of God as given in Science and Health—Principle, Mind, Soul, Spirit, Life, Truth, and Love—and thinking of them as necessary to one another, has since that time been a major source of inspiration for me. Not one exists without all the others, and they all describe the one complete, divine God. They exist as one, so they can be contemplated that way. This has helped me with many spiritual issues I've faced.

You may want more honesty, love, intelligence—all the God-like attributes—in your life. What I learned is, if I have one, I have them all, because they're all from the same divine source.

Laura Matthews
Framingham, Massachusetts