Editorial April 6, 2020 Issue

Our Easter antidote to temptation

Tony Lobl

As this week’s lead article (“Let Jesus’ resurrection transform you”) says, Easter is an epic event, full of great promise. Pondering it can bring transformation to our lives. Similarly, our Easter Sentinel Watch podcast on JSH-Online.com (dated April 6, 2020) shows the great hope the resurrection story affords us, and how this hope is realized in healing.

Yet the Easter event also includes a tale of temptations succumbed to, including the disciples falling asleep when Jesus deeply craved their support as he faced the monstrous injustice of his trial and crucifixion. He said to them, “Why are you sleeping? Get up and pray, so that you won’t enter into temptation” (Luke 22:46, Tree of Life Version).

The period of events leading up to the crucifixion was the most focused moment of what Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy describes as “the world’s hatred of Truth” (p. 50), where Truth is a synonym for God. But reading those words recently got me wondering whether we are as awake as we need to be to the same demand on us today. Science and Health describes the conspiracy, betrayal, and mob groupthink that led to the crucifixion as a “determination to hold Spirit in the grasp of matter” (p. 28). That determination continues in fresh forms today. For instance, there’s the presumption that only material knowledge is science; the conviction that Christ is still present as a personal Savior, Jesus, rather than being the infinite, healing idea of God as divine Mind that Jesus embodied; and disbelief that Christianity can offer physical healing, as it did in its early days.