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Don’t get squeezed into the world’s mold
My favorite verse in The New Testament in Modern English by J. B. Phillips is from the Apostle Paul’s letter to the small group of early Christians who were then living in Rome. Paul’s letter warns us, “Don’t let the world around you squeeze you into its own mould, but let God re-mould your minds from within, so that you may prove in practice that the plan of God for you is good, meets all his demands and moves towards the goal of true maturity” (Romans 12:2). For Paul, “the world” represents standard matter-based thinking, common in Paul’s day as in ours, squeezing away, trying to fit us into its mold.
Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer of Christian Science, uses the term “mortal mind” for this type of thought. In her foundational work, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, she explains, “. . . the author calls sick and sinful humanity mortal mind,—meaning by this term the flesh opposed to Spirit, the human mind and evil in contradistinction to the divine Mind, or Truth and good” (p. 114).
In my freshman year of college, I had a special opportunity to join a unit of elite scholars, two of whom eventually went on to become Nobel Prize winners. During the school year, each of us was to make a persuasive presentation on a subject of our own choosing. I was a new student of Christian Science and thrilled with the totally different concept it was giving me of our existence. So I began thinking that this was a subject on which I could be, if not persuasive, at least informative.
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