We might think of rebuke as a negative word. Who wants to be rebuked? But a rebuke can have a positive effect on our lives if there’s validity to what is being said and if it motivates us to change for the better. If something’s wrong, accepting a well-meant rebuke helps right it.

This is especially true in terms of our spiritual growth. Mary Baker Eddy’s writings include many beautiful rebukes, not of her readers, but of the perceptions of the material senses that would deny God’s infinite goodness. Here’s one I’ve been pondering: “No evidence before the material senses can close my eyes to the scientific proof that God, good, is supreme.” She goes on: “Though clouds are round about Him, the divine justice and judgment are enthroned. Love is especially near in times of hate, and never so near as when one can be just amid lawlessness, and render good for evil” (Miscellaneous Writings 1883–1896, p. 277).

Wait—what? There’s scientific proof that good is supreme? What kind of scientific proof? What evidence can possibly prove to me that health is supreme in the face of disease? Where is the scientific proof that peace is more powerful than the rage and war we are seeing right now?