Article February 6, 2012 Issue

Practice forgiving in daily life

By Makengo Ma Pululu

How do we forgive? This question touches everyone at some point—whether we’ve been wronged ourselves or see others as the victims of injustice. 

I remember when I first started studying Christian Science, I found an answer to this question in Science and Health in the chapter on “Prayer,” where Mary Baker Eddy states that man always needs to be in touch with God, in a conscious unity or communion with Him. She writes: “Prayer cannot change the unalterable Truth, nor can prayer alone give us an understanding of Truth; but prayer, coupled with a fervent habitual desire to know and do the will of God, will bring us into all Truth. Such a desire has little need of audible expression. It is best expressed in thought and in life” (p. 11). This transformation of thought causes us to relinquish the mortal ego that would separate us from the all-knowing, all-acting divine intelligence, and it’s fundamental to our reflection of God’s nature, whereby we are enabled to forgive our neighbor.

To mortal sense, there are offensive impulses of selfishness and sin in man. But these must be proved unreal, and thanks to spiritual sense they can be seen as an illusion in false, mortal consciousness and not genuine spiritual identity. Forgiving one’s enemies with great humility is to fathom the spiritual depths of man’s true nature, which is never contaminated by evil. We know that sin and imperfection are not genuine, and that they are not qualities of man, emanating from his Maker. So we have to meet so-called foes and friends equally on the basis of man’s true existence in God as His faultless, spotless idea. As Mrs. Eddy points out: “We must love our enemies in all the manifestations wherein and whereby we love our friends; must even try not to expose their faults, but to do them good whenever opportunity occurs” (Miscellaneous Writings 1883–1896, p. 11). Forgiving in such a way in individual lives can touch the hearts of all mankind and pacify them.