I was in the home of someone who receives a gift subscription to the Sentinel. That week's issue had just arrived in the mail, and this reader was leafing through it. Coming to the first paragraph of an article, she said aloud, "But that's always been my problem. I can't do that. I just can't learn!"

We've all probably felt this way at one time or another. But what is it that would make us feel that we aren't good enough—or sufficiently capable of learning—to do something that is good, progressive, and helpful?

A conversation I once had with a friend was helpful when I doubted my own ability to face a particular challenge. At one point I said to this friend, who was a Christian Scientist, "I want to do the right thing."

"That's not the point," she said.

At first I was surprised at this statement, but as we talked I saw something that I'd missed before. I had felt basically that my ability to face that challenge was wholly dependent on my own personal resourcefulness. This way of thinking can be so habitual that, without realizing it, we're left feeling almost wholly separated from God. As long as we're unaware of this general material view, we're going to run into many situations where we feel inadequate.

In regard to such thinking, it's interesting to consider Christ Jesus' response to many people who were in need. He often asked them to do things that would have been considered impossible by others. He would ask a man whose hand was crippled, for example, to stretch his hand out. Another man who had been palsied for many years was told to walk.

Such encounters weren't scenes of willful demanding. Nor were Jesus' words the emotion-laden commands of a faith healer, trying to arouse in some way a psychological response to overcome some presumably psychosomatic illness. A careful reading of the Gospels indicates that Jesus' confidence in people's ability to respond came from a reasonable understanding of man's true nature as the child of God.

Those who were receptive to Jesus' prayer and direction must have caught a glimpse of man's nature as the spiritual expression of God. This spiritual insight changed them. They were able to far exceed what they had previously thought themselves capable of.

We too will be able to do much more than we might now think possible as we begin to realize that our real potential and abilities are so much more than personal qualities or attributes.

I know someone who was told that she had little aptitude for advanced work in school. In fact, she was counseled that college-level work would be well out of reach and that she should plan for some other kind of post-high-school training. Not long afterward, this person learned about Christian Science and began to see something of the spiritual nature of man as the expression, or reflection, of God.

She began to realize the importance of understanding God and saw that such a spiritual understanding would change her view of herself as well. A sentence from Science and Health by Mrs. Eddy confirmed this: "If God were understood instead of being merely believed, this understanding would establish health."

Health relates to more than just physical wellness. While it certainly includes wellness, health embraces the entire well-being of an individual's life. "Spiritual perception," Science and Health goes on to point out, "brings out the possibilities of being, destroys reliance on aught but God, and so makes man the image of his Maker in deed and in truth."

If we find ourselves denying man's capacity to reflect God's goodness, strength, and power, then we can be sure that such denial isn't the self-constituted authority it claims to be. This must have been what those people awoke to when Jesus called upon them to exceed their "ordinary" abilities. Such awakening brought healing. It also brought healing to the person who was told she couldn't measure up to more advanced studies. As she prayed to follow God's direction and continued her study of Christian Science, she found herself able to do work she'd not been able to do previously. And she went on to advanced studies.

Any argument that denies a person's ability to be good, to be intelligent, to do what is right, is not simply a denial of a person's capacities. It's a denial of God's nature as unlimited Mind and of His idea, man. Such a denial isn't modesty or humility; it's an evil. We might even say that such denial is more than a mistake; it is a moral issue. We can refuse to identify ourselves with that which isn't truly us and isn't truly good. Man in his true selfhood—and this includes the true selfhood of each individual—reflects God's being just as rays of light naturally express their source.

To postulate that a material mortal can be perfect and unlimited is absurd. But to begin to realize that our real nature is spiritual and not mortal truly humbles and turns us Godward. In this light, Jesus' call "Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect" isn't unrealistic at all. It is a scientific statement of God's spiritual relationship to man as Father and child, or as Mind and idea.

To catch sight of this truth is to begin to realize our own capacity to be good and to reflect Mind's unlimited spiritual capacities.

Michael D. Rissler