Have you ever turned to the Father with the desperate lament "Help, I'm being stoned! What's worse, I live with the thrower." Or perhaps your boss, co-workers, or neighbors are the present-day Pharisees who would scorn and willfully obstruct your course? How about you? Do you, too, try to use personal influence, to push and shove your own way? Are you contributing to the resisting and retaliating of others?

If we're thinking, "It sure feels like a stone," aren't we very close to believing that harm has been done or soon will be? With such reaction, we may become despondent, resentful, or involved in outright conflict.

That we need not be buffeted by such volatile circumstances, or that harmful effects can be disarmed, can seem too good to be true. Christian Science, however, showed me the answer that makes all the difference. I found the following statement in Science and Health by Mrs. Eddy to be the solution: "There is but one way to heaven, harmony, and Christ in divine Science shows us this way. It is to know no other reality—to have no other consciousness of life—than good, God and His reflection, and to rise superior to the so-called pain and pleasure of the senses." ^{Science and Health, p. 242.}

I steadfastly depended on this after a heated argument in my own family.

A usually warmhearted family member grew cool and subtly disapproving of others. This eventually turned into expressions of grievances and angry condemnation. The resulting defensiveness and countercriticisms made one feel that unending discontent was inevitable. Each party was soon locked into trying to change the other's mistaken views. Focusing on arbitrary human disaffection surely felt less than heavenly!

Seeking to find the "one way to heaven, harmony," I read in Luke's Gospel about the healing of a man's withered hand. ^{See Luke 6:6–10 .} Significantly, it involves an atmosphere of animosity and a cast of faultfinders, a supposedly vulnerable Jesus, and a man greatly in need of healing. Christ Jesus has entered the synagogue and is being watched by the scribes and Pharisees. They hope to witness something that will incriminate him as a lawbreaker. What does Jesus do in the face of such antagonism?

Knowing their thoughts, we're told, he "said to the man which had the withered hand, Rise up, and stand forth in the midst." The man does so, and then Jesus says to them, "I will ask you one thing; Is it lawful on the sabbath days to do good, or to do evil? to save life, or to destroy it?" Then, "looking round about upon them all, he said unto the man, Stretch forth thy hand. And he did so: and his hand was restored whole as the other."

Such composure and command! Even while he was aware of his opponents' intentions and the menacing threats of human consequences, he was confident, forthright, and lovingly effective.

Perhaps the important thing for me to see was that Jesus was able to heal and to find the words that needed to be said because he was calmly confident in, and directed by, God alone. At another time he said, "The Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works." ^{John 14:10.}

While Jesus did not express this oneness in the terms Mrs. Eddy uses, it is clear that he consistently chose "to have no other consciousness of life—than good, God and His reflection" and affirmed this choice early in his ministry when he confronted temptation in the wilderness. ^{See Matt. 4:1–11.} He unequivocally knew whom to accept and to obey as God—repudiating the suggestion that one could serve both God and mammon. Christ Jesus totally trusted that God would be God and declared that man lived by every word of God.

This gave him authority to denounce foolish human doctrines that would have kept good from being done on the Sabbath. And there were occasions too when Jesus, following the same divine guidance, kept silent and answered "never a word." ^{Matt. 27:14.}

Unmistakably, the work was always God's, never merely a personal mission. Jesus chose action rather than reaction, and built it firmly on Principle. Not blinded by hurt feelings (self-love, self-justification) or driven by human opinions (self-will), the Master was free to direct his accusers, if they were receptive, to the real issue—to help them not lose sight of what was most important. For example, before healing the man with the withered hand, he asked them to consider a deeper aspect of the Sabbath—the question of doing good instead of evil, of saving instead of destroying.

What an uncompromising love Jesus expressed! His compassion was obvious in the healing of the deformed hand, but wasn't it also true of his clear, honest answer to the Pharisees? While his response was not pleasing or pacifying, it was surely motivated by divine Love. Christ Jesus lived these two great commandments: loving God with all one's heart, soul, mind, and strength and loving one's neighbor as oneself. He commanded his followers to do likewise and added what he called his commandment: that they should love others as he had loved them! ^{See Mark 12:28–31; John 15:12.}

What would invite or agitate anyone to do otherwise? Science and Health explains this phenomenon: "Will-power is but a product of belief, and this belief commits depredations on harmony. Human will is an animal propensity, not a faculty of Soul. Hence it cannot govern man aright. Christian Science reveals Truth and Love as the motive-powers of man. Will—blind, stubborn, and headlong—cooperates with appetite and passion. From this cooperation arises its evil. From this also comes its powerlessness, since all power belongs to God, good." ^{Science and Health, p. 490.}

How important it is to remember willpower's powerlessness! Jesus must have. He was unimpressed by the arrogance of hostile mortals because he consistently claimed his unity with his Father.

This study brought me a tremendous peace and calm assurance; the Christ was showing me the way to harmony. The stormy scene of torment and injury—the goadings of material sense—was becoming as ephemeral as the brief, vague memory of dreams upon awakening.

Even while I joyously whispered to myself, "There can be no unlove—divine Love fills all space!" I could feel the healing warmth of God's totally satisfying love encircling each of us. It was heavenly to get up from bowing to that false concept of unlove—a would-be tyrant—as if it were something to fear or avoid, fight or appease.

And thinking of tyrants, I saw our protection in these lines of a hymn by Mrs. Eddy:

God able? You bet! Wholeheartedly, I knew I could trust in God and His perfect, always complete, spiritual creation.

There could be no misplaced, replaced, or disgraced children of God. Recognizing man as the very image of his Maker, divine Love, I could comprehend his inevitable activity of pure loving. What else could a reflection do but image forth its original source? There was no mortality to watch or fear, no personal love to measure.

As for the brush-fire suggestions of cross-purposes or lingering resentment, I could discern these as actually untrue. Even the occasional confrontations became valuable opportunities for me to strengthen my own moral purpose. I was learning to be more patient and alert to love others as myself rather than for myself—to treat as I would like to be treated and to keep self-concern out of the picture. I was finding courage to drop the mortal labels of myself and others and to better see the members of my family as ideas of God, belonging to Him exclusively. My service to my family, I realized, must be under God's direction.

In the family, we began to speak from reliance more on Principle than on mortal person, and this helped us better determine our right responses, whether for action or pausing. Increasingly, we felt free to appreciate one another's spiritually established goodness and loveliness, no matter what the human display of mood or behavior. Our good will was becoming far less conditional than it had ever been before.

We could, in fact, only be blessings to each other, and daily we were more able to see and be exactly that. We were learning through Christ to be the Love-governed ideas God had actually created us to be.

All of us can be encouraged by this statement from Science and Health: "In Christian Science, man can do no harm, for scientific thoughts are true thoughts, passing from God to man." ^{Science and Health, pp. 103–104.} And we can assure ourselves and graciously explain to others that not only has there been no harm done; harm cannot be done when Love reigns.