Bah, humbugs!

Is what you see really what you get?

By Guy Malcolm Hooper

There is a story told about Charles Darwin. Two boys, friends of Darwin, decided to play a joke on him. They caught a butterfly, a grasshopper, a centipede, and a beetle, took parts from each bug, and glued them carefully together into a rather incredible insect. They then put it into a box, presented it to Darwin, and asked him to tell them what kind of bug it was. Darwin looked at it and then at the boys, and with a smile he inquired, "Did it hum when you caught it?"

"Yes it did," they agreed, nudging each other."

"Well," he said, "it is a humbug."

This anecdote contains an important lesson about much of what is promoted as fact in our day-to-day experience. We can all think of examples where our eyes and ears detect what appears to be a true condition that is not true at all, such as the sun rising and setting, or the sky touching the land or water. We are willing to admit the senses' unreliability in discerning the truth about some things, but at other times we act as though these senses were the only instruments for judging what is meaningful and true.

Of greatest significance perhaps is the way we identify ourselves and others. If we perceive man only as biological, controlled by laws of matter, we are accepting a very limited concept, and one that is actually incorrect according to Scripture.

In numerous instances Christ Jesus showed that what the senses perceive as real conditions, such as discord, lack, disease, and death, are, in the final analysis, illusions resulting from ignorance of the spiritual nature of life. Jesus never appears to have accepted what the material senses depicted as conclusive. Instead, he recognized life as proceeding from Spirit, God, whom he referred to as his Father. He taught what today we take for granted as a fundamental law—like produces like—and, therefore, that the perfect cause, God, divine Spirit, must have a spiritual and perfect effect.

In healing the crippled woman mentioned in Luke 13 (see verses 11-17), Jesus spoke of her as having been victimized by Satan, or evil, and he asked of his detractors, "Ought not this woman, being a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan hath bound, lo, these eighteen years, be loosed from this bond on the sabbath day?"

Doesn't the change in the woman's experience from crippling deformity to instant freedom indicate that Jesus was not taken in by the material picture? With powerful love, he must have understood that the woman's real, spiritual identity as a child of God had never been affected by any so-called material law of discord. And healing resulted.

Christian Science, based on the Scriptures, explains that everything in our lives is a manifestation of our thought. Are our thoughts good, uplifting, beautiful, or are they ugly, angry, envious? Only good thoughts are true; they come from God, divine Truth. And they lead to enlightenment and peace.

Are our thoughts good, uplifting, beautiful, or are they ugly, angry, envious?

The word smile is not used in the Bible, but it seems to me that Jesus must have smiled often and expressed great peace and poise as he patiently taught his followers about man's real, spiritual identity as God's image and likeness. And about the illusive nature of life as reported by the material senses. Regarding this illusion, Science and Health comments: "God is not the author of mortal discords. Therefore we accept the conclusion that discords have only a fabulous existence, are mortal beliefs which divine Truth and Love destroy" (p. 231).

The next time you are presented with a picture of misfortune or evil, remember that you are being tempted to believe in an illusion. Call it a "humbug" and understand what's true. That spiritual understanding will bring a change for the better.

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