Clear communication

Last summer, just before my freshman year in college, I worked as an engineering intern at a manufacturing plant in Oklahoma. The company I worked for makes machines that fuse pipes together. I worked with men in the prototype shop, who were all fun and laid-back people. I really enjoyed watching them design machine parts and helping them actually make the parts. I learned a lot about mechanical engineering as they taught me how to use the mills and machines.

After working around these men for a while, I realized that there was one thing they did that made me unhappy and uncomfortable. Many of the men I worked with in the shop used a lot of curse words in their sentences, and I heard a lot of profanity. It seemed to just be a habit for them—I don’t think they ever thought there was anything wrong with using these words. At first I just tried to ignore the profanity. But as I continued to hear it day after day, my love for my work began to wane. My parents had taught me not to use curse words, and they didn’t use them either, so I’d never heard this kind of language so constantly before. It really bothered me and diminished the happiness of the environment.

When I realized that these men were going to continue using this kind of language, I thought of what I’d learned in Christian Science about how man—meaning all men and women—was really created. The Bible says that man was made by God, who is the only cause and creator (see Genesis, chapter 1). Once I realized this, I also knew that the only thing that the men in the shop could reflect was constant righteousness and good coming directly from God. 

The men I worked with couldn’t be prevented from seeing their true, spiritual selves.

I told my Sunday School teacher about what was going on at work, and he talked to me about the spiritual definition of man. In Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy, man is defined as “the compound idea of infinite Spirit; the spiritual image and likeness of God; the full representation of Mind” (p. 591 ). Together, my teacher and I looked up the definition of the word compound and found it meant something was made up of two or more separate elements. My teacher then asked me what I thought those elements of infinite Spirit might be. After thinking about it for a minute, I told him that I knew those elements could only be things like:

• Goodness, righteousness
• Filling our consciousness with only spiritual ideas
• Reflecting God constantly
• Following the rules of divine Principle
• Only doing helpful things

After talking about these spiritual elements, my teacher then showed me a line in Science and Health that says: “Man reflects infinite Truth, Life, and Love” (p. 94 ). Since Truth, Life, and Love were all capitalized, I knew they referred to God. Knowing this told me that everyone, including the men I worked with, must reflect God. Once I realized this, I saw that God was handling the situation and that the men I worked with couldn’t be prevented from seeing their true, spiritual selves. I wasn’t sure how this might happen, but I knew that God would lead me in the right direction.

The next day, I was working in the workshop with these men, toward the end of the day, and we were having a fun time talking with each other while using the mills. We were all laughing and being silly when one of the guys made a joke and used two curse words in it. His joke made us all laugh, and while laughing with a big smile on my face, I heard myself saying to them all, “Hey, come on, I know you’re all of higher quality than to use language like that.” 

I hadn’t been planning to say it, and because everyone had been laughing and the machines were making a lot of noise, I wasn’t sure if anyone had even heard. However, the next day at work, I noticed that the amount of profanity had dropped hugely, and yet everyone still had their happy, cheerful, silly conversations. I worked the rest of the summer with these men and had a much more comfortable time with them. I am so grateful for Christian Science and all the help we receive from the things we learn in Sunday School.