It is generally recognized that looking backward while walking forward can be a dangerous business! Yet, otherwise sensible people often do this. I'm not just referring to the times when we may have turned to speak to someone passing by on a busy sidewalk and have nearly walked into a utility pole! Such experiences may be embarrassing, but they are not generally so damaging as the kind of "looking back" that goes on in the privacy of our own consciousness.

The Bible addresses this subject in several places. For example, in Genesis we read that Lot's wife was turned into a pillar of salt ^{See Gen. 19:17, 26 .} because, instead of obeying the divine command to leave the sinful environment of Sodom and Gomorrah without a backward glance, she turned around to witness the destruction of these cities.

Reminding his disciples of this incident, Christ Jesus spoke of the day of judgment when each of them would face a similar choice. ^{See Luke 17:28-37 .} "In that day, he which shall be upon the housetop, and his stuff in the house, let him not come down to take it away: and he that is in the field, let him likewise not return back." Continuing on this subject, he added, "Two women shall be grinding together; the one shall be taken, and the other left."

We need not wait for some great earthquake or final judgment day to heed this warning. As the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, Mary Baker Eddy, writes in the Christian Science textbook, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, "No final judgment awaits mortals, for the judgment-day of wisdom comes hourly and continually, even the judgment by which mortal man is divested of all material error." ^{Science and Health, p. 291.} Each time we face the need to give up some form of error—some belief in a power apart from God—and to grow in spiritual grace, we are confronted with the choice of whether to be "taken" or "left." Isn't the one who is "left" the individual who clings to a mortal or personal sense of life with its limitations, while the one "taken" is the one who is ready to leave all for Christ and go forward in spiritual understanding?

To me, this choosing between two courses of action indicates that salvation is individual, and spiritual progress comes to each of us as he or she is ready for it rather than to all en masse. Eventually we all must turn from materiality, but this depends on our individual willingness to abandon mortal dependencies and to accept the spiritual facts of being.

Guilt, remorse, resentment, and undestroyed sin would perpetually attract thought backward, crippling one's capacity to follow Christ. To destroy these errors and break the mesmerism that would hold us prisoners of our own (or others') past mistakes, we must recognize the spiritual fact that God, good, is the only Life, and man is His eternal likeness. This fact of man's inseparability from God, as illustrated by the life of Christ Jesus, shows mortal existence to be a self-deceptive and temporal dream. Instead of minimizing the value of human life, recognition of this fact strips away whatever would demoralize us and reveals the present sinlessness of each of us in our true being as God's children. Such spiritual understanding and demonstration destroy the fanciful lure of sin and free us from its aftereffects. They replace degradation with a feeling of conscious worth.

A sinful past, however, is not the only kind that must be put off. What about clinging obsessively to sugarcoated memories of "the good old days"? While it is right to be grateful for the good and joy experienced throughout our lives, we must avoid the temptation to idolize some past period of growth as if our best years and best friends were now behind us, thus robbing ourselves of present joy. God's goodness and purpose for each of us remain undiminished forever.

Another temptation that would pull thought backward in a manner destructive to progress is morbid curiosity. Did Lot's wife perhaps turn back to see whether all those sinners in Sodom and Gomorrah got their just deserts? Isn't this the motive of much malicious gossip and speculation regarding other people's sins? A preoccupation either with our own or another's sins would immobilize thought in mortality's mire when it should be advancing toward a more Christly view of creation.

In Christian Science practice, looking back on past mistakes may be productive if we are developing a higher moral consciousness, if we are seeking to gain an acute awareness of misconceptions needing to be eliminated from our own thoughts and lives. At such times, various errors that were hidden in thought may come to light; but they come out in order to be destroyed, not to be embraced as reality. We need not go delving into mortal memory, looking for such errors, but can always trust that as we strive to advance Godward, the power of spiritual cleansing will force to the surface any past errors that need to be confronted and cast out. Science and Health says of this process, "Mental chemicalization brings sin and sickness to the surface, forcing impurities to pass away, as is the case with a fermenting fluid." ^{Ibid., p. 401.}

Letting this spiritual force transform our lives, we leave the past as a butterfly leaves its cocoon. For a butterfly to try to live a worm's existence would be a waste of its potential as well as a denial of its purpose. The Christian Science textbook declares: "The caterpillar, transformed into a beautiful insect, is no longer a worm, nor does the insect return to fraternize with or control the worm. Such a backward transformation is impossible in Science." And later we read, "In Christian Science there is never a retrograde step, never a return to positions outgrown." ^{Ibid., p. 74.}

Obeying the command not to look back provides neither a mandate nor an excuse for coldly turning our backs on right relationships with family or friends. We should be dropping only what is wrong or outgrown in our relationships—old patterns of thought and outworn materialistic views of creation that would limit the development of Christliness. We are challenged to bring our sense of friendship and family with us into the spiritual present rather than hold it static in mortal memory.

Life is continuous and eternal, providing fresh opportunity for simultaneous promise and fulfillment every step of the way. Rather than look back with nostalgic regret or morbid curiosity on outgrown phases of our lives, we can each continue forward with renewed assurance that the present holds the superabundance of infinite Love and the uninterrupted unfoldment of eternal Life.