Double trouble or single-mindedness?
My grandchildren and I enjoy reading a book called Double Trouble in Walla Walla by Andrew Clements. It uses lots of phrases that play on the sing-songy name of the town of Walla Walla (in the northwestern United States), such as “wishy washy,” “topsy turvy,” and “namby pamby.”
It struck me recently how often human language uses such dual terms to describe double-mindedness. They perfectly account for the erratic indecisiveness mentioned in the Bible’s book of James: “A double-minded man is unstable in all his ways.” Also: “He that wavereth is like a wave of the sea driven with the wind and tossed. For let not that man think that he shall receive any thing of the Lord” (James 1:8, 6, 7 ).
How often we find ourselves wishing for some good outcome, yet despairing of ever attaining it. This is a form of double-mindedness, where one focus cancels out or opposes the other. But if we wish to strengthen our healing efforts, a good long look at what we focus on, and how we identify ourselves, makes a key difference.
Jesus often appeared to link single-mindedness and health, or other good accomplishments. “If ... thine eye be single,” he said, “thy whole body shall be full of light. But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness” (Matthew 6:22, 23 ). As I see it, Jesus is identifying evil as the opposite of “single,” or a form of double-mindedness.
We might relate that to Jesus’ parable about an unjust judge who neither honored God nor respected man. Yet when a single-minded widow brought an issue to the judge for resolution, he agreed to help her because he didn’t want to be troubled, and he saw that she was going to persist in coming until the matter was settled (see Luke 18:1–8 ).
A phrase we often use for “deciding” is “to make up our mind.” Abraham Lincoln is purported to have said, “Most folks are as happy as they make up their minds to be.” The widow in the parable had made up her mind that she would not take no for an answer, and that helped the unjust judge make up his mind to help her.
In Christian Science we find added meaning in that saying about happiness by considering which mind we are making up. Are we identifying ourselves with mortal mind, divided into many minds, wills, and opinions, inherently double-minded and unstable, or with divine Mind, which is consistent, whole, and as steady as a rock? The one Mind includes all characteristics and qualities needed for success in any direction that will bless everyone, with not a single opposing attribute. To make up your mind that you will have only the one Mind that was in Christ Jesus (see Philippians 2:5 ), is to resolve to accomplish the good you are capable of.
Jesus didn’t think of himself as having a separate mind or will from God. This enabled him to instantly identify what was right and what was wrong, and to know what to do about it. When you make up your mind to follow Jesus, you commit yourself to embodying the qualities of God that Jesus embodied. If you think of material conditions as qualities opposed to Spirit, as Jesus did, you can dismiss them as having no place in the divine Mind, or in your experience. Double-mindedness is simply an ill-advised attempt to blend opposing qualities such as good and bad, hope and despair, kindness and meanness, ability and inability.
Jesus didn’t think of himself as having a separate mind or will from God.
To firmly resolve, like the insistent widow in Jesus’ parable, to commit yourself to the highest purpose for your life, is to bring the qualities of diligence, promptness, and perseverance into service. “Your decisions will master you, whichever direction they take,” wrote Mary Baker Eddy in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures (p. 392 ). If your decisions are based on the material senses and physical evidence, evil appears to be more prevalent than good and sickness to be unavoidable. But by looking beyond evil, or double-mindedness, to the spiritual evidence, you are enabled to bring your human experience into accord with that single-minded view of goodness from divine Mind, where your whole body is full of light. This is making up your mind to expect and accomplish good, to identify the one all-powerful divine Mind as your only Mind, and the only Mind of everyone.
I have found that if you reach a point when a failure seems unavoidable, this is the moment to establish which mind you are calling your own. Which laws are you holding yourself subject to? Mary Baker Eddy wrote: “Jesus’ students, failing to cure a severe case of lunacy, asked their great Teacher, ‘Why could not we cast him out?’ He answered, ‘This kind goeth not out but by prayer and fasting.’ This declaration of our Master, as to the relative value, skill, and certainty of the divine laws of Mind over the human mind and above matter in healing disease, remains beyond questioning a divine decision in behalf of Mind.
“Jesus gave his disciples (students) power over all manner of diseases; and the Bible was written in order that all peoples, in all ages, should have the same opportunity to become students of the Christ, Truth, and thus become God-endued with power (knowledge of divine law) and with ‘signs following’ ” (The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, p. 190 ).
After World War I, a worldwide flu epidemic hit the small town of Walla Walla. Its hospital was overwhelmed with patients. Fort Walla Walla, an outpost created as a terminus for the Oregon trail in the previous century, was turned into a makeshift infirmary. Because so many trained medical personnel in Walla Walla were ill, the Christian Scientists in town volunteered to serve as nurses in the fort. My great-grandmother, like many of the others serving, would go from patient to patient, offering to pray for them while meeting their basic human needs. Some patients agreed to this, and many were quickly healed.
Not long ago, my mother met a woman who told her that one patient for whom my great grandmother had prayed was a relative of hers. He was very quickly restored and went home and shared Christian Science with his whole family. As a result, many of them took up the study of Christian Science.
As I see it, such Bible-based healing proves that there was no shilly-shallying or double-mindedness during that time of great need in Walla Walla. Most of the volunteers, like my great-grandmother, had been healed of severe illnesses themselves. They thought and acted with one Mind, entertaining no opposing doubts or fears, knowing that what had healed them would heal others. This same kind of independence and industry, decisiveness and commitment, is needed and available to every follower of Christ Jesus today. It just entails making up your mind to have only one Mind.
