Don't Tease!

[Of Special Interest to Children]

KATHRYN PAULSON GROUNDS

"Don't tease!" How often have you heard your mother or father say this when you have been, perhaps thoughtlessly, annoying a brother or a sister? Teasing is an unlovely habit, particularly since its only object is to make someone else angry. Most important of all, it breaks the law of Love, or God!

What happens when we break a law? We are liable to punishment by law. For instance, if we drive down the wrong side of the street, we shall be penalized or fined by the law. But if we stay on the right side, we are protected by law. It is up to us whether we are punished or protected.

Christ Jesus gave us a law when he said (John 15:12), "This is my commandment, That ye love one another, as I have loved you." If we love someone in the Christly way, we shall have no desire to cause him pain of any kind. Our only desire will be to give him happiness through the expression of such qualities as kindness, patience, courtesy, and cooperation. In so doing, we place ourselves under the direct protection of the law of God, who is unchanging Love.

Sometimes we learn this only through a hard lesson, as Donald did. He has been a pupil in the Christian Science Sunday School ever since he can remember, and he and his small brother, Joe, have always relied upon Christian Science for the healing of every kind of problem.

They both have proved many times the truth of these words of Mrs. Eddy (Science and Health, p. 494): "Divine Love always has met and always will meet every human need." However, an annoying and ugly skin condition persisted in troubling Donald, although his mother and father had both done prayerful work about it.

One day Father pointed out that Donald's habit of teasing Joe had become a source of much inharmony in the home and that these unloving attacks were violations of God's law of love.

"You see, Donald," he explained, "you think you find pleasure in teasing your brother. But since teasing breaks the law of Love, it must be sin, and therefore it has no real pleasure at all in it, only pain. So long as we think we can get pleasure from error, we are liable to get pain from it too!"

Father and son talked together until Donald saw that obedience to God's laws is necessary and realized that if he overcame the belief of pleasure in error, he would also conquer the belief of pain from it, for both were unreal.

By the next day the skin condition was completely and permanently healed. But more important than this, Donald had caught a glimpse of one of the great truths of Christian Science: that obedience to the law of Love is always rewarded. If we refuse to let error use us as its tool, we shall not become its victim. This is a wonderful lesson!

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