A crisis is a time of supposed extra pressure from trouble. Its outcome may seem problematic. But in the reality of being neither God nor man, His flawless idea, passes through crises. The belief that error or evil can accumulate or become more burdensome is just that—a belief, and never an actual phase.

Error can never become more dense or intense, because it never came into being. God's infinitude does not come and go, allowing error to advance or retreat. As a step in hastening the end of an apparent crisis, we can acknowledge that error cannot become more threatening, more perilous, more aggressive, because it can never become more than absolutely nothing. Mary Baker Eddy states categorically: "Evil is neither quality nor quantity: it is not intelligence, a person or a principle, a man or a woman, a place or a thing, and God never made it." ^{Message to The Mother Church for 1901, pp. 12-13;}

As we understand the scientific truth of Life, and that a crisis is never a reality, we can read what seems to be a crisis as an opportunity to take a more radical grasp of Truth. Thus seen, a crisis is a growth phase, not something to despair over. In surmounting crises we can move to a higher point of understanding than we've ever ascended to before.

What is popularly called an energy crisis is actually a demand for a more metaphysical assessment of energy—to see it as spiritual and therefore inexhaustible, like its source, God. It can and ultimately will be gotten through, and we hasten the resolutions as we deny that error can gather seriousness, tenacity, resistance. A crisis is a time to toughen our spiritual conviction rather than decline into depths of anxiety.

It's a call to take decisive steps—and the most decisive we can take is to assert with more confidence than we have rallied before that Spirit, God, is irresistibly All. When looked at more spiritually, a crisis is merely a transitional period between a lower level of understanding and a higher one. Seeing this changes our relationship to crisis from subordination to mastery.

If there were any such thing as mortal mind, and if it had intelligence—both points are untrue—it might well suggest to us at some particular time that evil is reaching a crescendo of threat and menace. Under cover of this claim mortal mind would smuggle into our thought the concession that evil is a reality in the first place to become a bigger reality in the second.

To believe that anything in opposition to God, good, is real would indeed—in human belief—put us into a critical position. But because evil is nonexistent, mortal mind does not have any material to work with. It actually has no subtlety with which to hide and prolong itself. It has no weapons to attack us with. The Psalmist tells us, "Let all those that put their trust in thee rejoice: let them ever shout for joy, because thou defendest them." ^{Ps. 5: 11.}

Because man is the self-expression of divine Principle, he does not suffer ups or downs or the coming and going of good. Crisis could occur only in an arena where good was confronted by error— but there is no such arena. Love and its concept constitute the All of reality. This always excludes anything that would set itself against divine Truth. As we see ourselves more scientifically—above rather than under the claim of crisis—we can be sure that we are very close to getting through it. Then, as we look back at the crisis, we see it as a preliminary to proving the impotence of evil and not as a day or year when mortal mind came close to achieving some sinister aim.

From the outlook of divine dominion a crisis is not a time of particular hazard but an opening for special expansion of spiritual certainty. All that is ever actually taking place is divine Mind's self-manifestation. This divine activity never passes through critical phases, never permits or induces crises.

When mortal mind would suggest that things are worse than ever, this can be encouraging evidence of its desperation, not a sign that it is about to be victorious. That animal magnetism should suggest we are wound into a difficult crisis may show that its previous tries to have itself admitted as valid and true have failed.

Divine Truth acting on human thought sometimes stirs up mistaken notions needing to be disposed of, and we may interpret this stirring as a trying crisis. However, the turbulent surfacing of error presages its destruction and affirms the presence of the Christ, God's power.

Chemicalization, as this turbulence is named in Christian Science, should be seen positively, as evidencing the initiative of Truth, not error. It is an indication that Truth is casting out suppositious opposition. As we identify ourselves with Truth, claiming our selfhood as Truth's pure idea, and as we persistently refuse to identify ourselves with evil, chemicalization is painless—it is harmless in the measure that we admit the truth of being, in which divine Love is All—unopposed—and error is a nonentity that can offer no resistance to Truth.

Geoffrey J. Barratt