Announcer: When decisions have to be made, many responsible people are filled with uncertainty. Sometimes they'd like to avoid the necessity of deciding one way or the other. But delaying a decision only adds to the feeling of uncertainty. What they really want is a way to be guided to make right decisions.

Questioner: Decision-making can be quite an agonizing problem. In my work as a guidance counselor, I've seen how difficult it is for parents and students, even with rather clear-cut choices before them, to make decisions. Certainly for businessmen decisions are sometimes even more challenging.

I'm interested in what you think decision-makers can do to make better decisions.

Speaker: The big point to see is that the answers to their problems exist. They need, though, to look beyond human resources to find them, and the Bible is of great help in this. It's filled with the guidance and wisdom necessary for any decision. However, the Bible tells us that God is the source of wisdom and understanding, rather than instructing us to rely on a personal endowment. Most decision-makers need two things: first, prayerful seeking of divine wisdom or understanding; and secondly, trusting the understanding that divine Mind reveals to them.

A helpful Bible verse reads (Prov. 4:7), "Wisdom is the principal thing: therefore get wisdom: and with all thy getting get understanding." And the Bible has this to say about trusting God instead of just our own understanding (Prov. 3:5, 6): "Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths."

Questioner: Perhaps many young people, businessmen, and housewives would like to be able to do this: but trusting in God is not characteristic of the way they live.

Speaker: Divine wisdom and trust don't always characterize decision makers. That's why wavering and uncertainties seem to thrive. And that's why there's so much fear of mistakes.

Jesus obtained the answer to many questions because he knew how to pray for the wisdom of God how to receive it and how to use it. But he never claimed he had a monopoly on it. On the contrary, he taught that God bestows His judgment and wisdom impartially upon all His children.

Questioner: God's judgment—a judgment that helps to make right decisions? I don't really understand.

Speaker: Well, the judgment of God is akin to the wisdom of God. It isn't a pronouncement upon people, but it has a guiding effect. That's the judgment we're seeking. It's the judgment that helps us to arrive at a right decision. It's based on the understanding that God intelligent Mind, is always present with us.

The Bible says (Zeph. 3:5, 17): "The just Lord is in the midst thereof; he will not do iniquity: every morning doth he bring his judgment to light, he faileth not. . . . The Lord thy God in the midst of thee is mighty."

Questioner: But don't you think that making decisions is a very complicated process? Let us say a man has to make a rather profound and long-range business decision. He knows that there are many factors in this.

Speaker: This is an error people make who are faced with decisions. They concentrate on the decision. They fail to improve their thinking which, after all, governs the outward decision they need. We don't just get a decision out of the blue. We improve our thought under divine guidance and that is externalized in the judgment we need.

Questioner: Perhaps many persons are wondering how an individual can have access to the inspiration to which you refer.

Speaker: The facts are there. Let me paraphrase your question. How can I let the bright sunlight into my living room? By raising the window shade or drawing the draperies. You don't create the sunlight, you merely let it in. Human beings don't create divine intelligence. When the windowpane of consciousness is uncluttered, that is, unselfed, intelligence can enter.

This is explained in a sentence from "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy (p. 192), "Whatever holds human thought in line with unselfed love, receives directly the divine power."

You see, we bear in mind that man is the likeness of God; he is spiritual and not material. Now, there are not two of us, although we appear to have two concepts of ourselves. Sometimes we get to believing that we are mortals separated from God. This is a false concept of ourselves. We're really never separated from God, and we do live in the presence of divine Love.

Now, a selfish person closes his mentality to this truth, to divine light and guidance. A receptive person opens his. In this way we're helped to gain an understanding of our real nature in the likeness of God. We see that we never really have been separated from divine intelligence, and we're increasingly able to express the clarity of certainty, the certainty of divine Mind, to claim and prove these words of Mary Baker Eddy (Pulpit and Press, p. 3): "Know, then, that you possess sovereign power to think and act rightly, and that nothing can dispossess you of this heritage and trespass on Love."

Questioner: Have you ever had this kind of an experience yourself, where God actually became a part of a decision?

Speaker: Many times. I have felt my thought illumined and felt sure it was divine leading.

Questioner: And was it ever counter to the decision that you had perhaps tentatively arrived at?

Speaker: Many times, because I was motivated by self-will and human outlining; but when I listened, I really was divinely directed and came to a decision which was much better than the one I'd planned and worked for.

Questioner: Have you ever found this countermanded, though, so that later experience showed that the decision for which you listened really wasn't the best?

Speaker: Well, let me answer your question this way. Sometimes I've taken a step and found it wasn't just the right one. But I don't condemn myself, because I see it was part of the working out of my problem. I gained a view that I wouldn't have had if I hadn't taken that step. Then I go on from there, and I continue to listen and endeavor to put self aside. In proportion as I do so, I get divine leading; and more and more I prove it's infallible.

Questioner: How does all this actually help a decision-maker who perhaps feels inadequate or feels that he's lacking in the "power to think and act rightly"?

Speaker: Well, it's practical, but it demands action on our part to bring results.

Questioner: What would you do?

Speaker: Well, in Christian Science we learn to rise superior to a false concept of ourselves. We lay claim to what really belongs to man in God's likeness. Again, we rely unreservedly on divine Mind. This removes the fear of mistakes and opens thought to inspiration, judgment, perception. We really spiritualize our thought. This means praying to be impelled by divine Mind alone and working honestly to express our God derived ability and judgment.