Most people are used to reading news accounts of sharply held religious views. Passionate feelings expressed by conservatives in Islam, Judaism, and Christianity may make the headlines. Such people are often referred to as fundamentalists. Perhaps their attitudes stand out in public because they are so fiercely felt and because they tend to depart from the more moderate mainstream.

While most of us might think of fundamentalists as disposed toward rigid views, there are certainly facets of their lives that are pretty normal—just like the rest of us. On the other hand, if all of us who consider ourselves more "normal" were to take a penetrating look closer to home, it's just possible we might discover some rigidity of our own. Maybe such attitudes relate to personal religious views. Or maybe they just relate to run-of-the-mill events in our lives. But even these ordinary aspects of existence may ultimately have some-thing to do with theology—our view of God and His creation.

Suppose you live in a neighborhood where the pizza shop is open until all hours of the night. Neighbors who oppose the late-hour noise begin taking public positions that contrast strikingly with business people and night owls who feel strongly about the right to have such facilities available. Attitudes may grow intense. Thoughts held by each side may move beyond the impersonal issues and become strongly personal—even hostile. When elements of defensiveness, resentment, or bitterness flair up, it can get pretty tough to practice such basic societal and religious norms as the Golden Rule.

Slipping into rigid states of thought actually can be quite destabilizing to a neighborhood. Such stiffened or arthritic attitudes can have the same negative effect on families. On a church. Even on a nation.

Organizations in society function best when there is a deep respect for the fact that honest people can have honest differences. Learning to appreciate those differences may not be easy. In fact, it's much easier for views to become fixed and unbending. A lot of work can be involved keeping channels of communication open, keeping attitudes from becoming deeply entrenched.

How can we do it? How can we keep our views free of dogmatism and intolerance when we have powerful feelings? Christ Jesus gives all of us an answer. It is spelled out in his Sermon on the Mount. And this sermon is illustrated in how he lived his life. If ever there was someone who practiced what he preached, it was Jesus.

Both the sermon he preached and the life he lived showed what it means for the Christ—man's true spirituality—to take the edge off how we are thinking and acting toward our fellowman when conflicting views are so strongly held. Surely no one has ever felt more deeply than Jesus did over just about everything! About God. About humanity. About the difference between right and wrong.

And yet this man's life and teachings are marked with a patience, a forbearance, a forgiveness, and a humility that are unsurpassed. These Christly qualities that broadly characterized his life—even when he spoke bluntly to those who disagreed with him—were the source from which he drew his strength. It was his godliness, the Christ itself, that made him an utterly powerful presence as he engaged the world.

This spirituality Jesus expressed enabled him to hold profound views—and hold them firmly. But it did not cause him to lose his amazing ability to continue reaching out with love and compassionate care—even when it would have been humanly normal to react with hostility in the face of injustice and hatred. What gave him this unique ability?

Jesus understood that the human mind by nature tends to become rigid. His Sermon on the Mount is filled with guidance that gently leads personal mentalities away from hardened attitudes. He spoke of agreeing with our adversary, going the extra mile, turning the other cheek. In fact, many of his words and even his actions might almost sound as though he were willing for his opponents to walk all over him!

In truth, it was really the other way around. Jesus felt such a deep spiritual conviction about his views and actions that he was fully able to trust God to prove him right. Such trust took an enormous amount of humility. Meekness is the opposite of what most people feel is needed when a point of view must be proved. And without the Christ empowering our thought, we could easily find ourselves turning into a doormat. But a spiritual- or Christly-mindedness ultimately will always prevail. And the Bible, assuring us of our true, God-given consciousness, promises, "We have the mind of Christ." What a comforting and strengthening gift!

The Christly quality of humility does in a certain sense relax our human views. That is, it frees us from the rigidity that is a kind of fear. The human mind is all too often a little bundle of fears, and its inflexible views actually represent a peculiar type of uncertainty. But a Christly state of thought finds a release in the assurance that God is fully able to work out His plan, even when it looks very doubtful from a limited, personal point of view.

Is it any wonder that Mary Baker Eddy put so much confidence in all that leads to a quiet and inner certainty of God's control? How natural it was to call for lives more filled with practicing what Jesus preached. She could write, "To my sense the Sermon on the Mount, read each Sunday without comment and obeyed throughout the week, would be enough for Christian practice" (Message to The Mother Church for 1901).

Each of us can no doubt find ways to moderate not a deeply held love of God but rigidly held human views. There is something immensely liberating when we are able to let go of how tightly the human mind holds on and instead feel that it is God who is holding us firmly in His unfolding purpose.

Nathan A. Talbot