God's law of equality
We are all concerned with balance. Whether it’s the businessman’s financial statements or the child’s wobbly bike-riding lessons, it’s about balance.
When I started my first business, I did not quite understand why balance was important. I thought that if the product met a need at a fair price and I advertised it, the buyers would flock to my door (or in this case, send checks to my post-office box). That didn’t happen.
I had only one part of the formula for success: the product. My money ran out quickly. I had a wife, two young children, and house payments, but no tangible source of supply. I would go to the post office, open my box, and—nothing. So I started to pray (why do we so often do this last?). What I turned to was the Apostle Paul’s admonition to the Corinthians: “Now therefore perform the doing of it; that as there was a readiness to will, so there may be a performance also out of that which ye have. For if there be first a willing mind, it is accepted according to that a man hath, and not according to that he hath not” (II Corinthians 8:11, 12).
Well, I certainly wanted to move forward. Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, wrote, “. . . progress is the law of God, whose law demands of us only what we can certainly fulfill” (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 233). But I wasn’t feeling like much progress was taking place. I had a storeroom full of product ready for my customers. Where were their orders?
I discussed this apparent lack with a Christian Science practitioner. He helped me to see that if I expected my supply to jump out of that mailbox, I was placing my faith on the wrong thing. Paul’s urging to “perform the doing of it” is presumptive of both execution and success. But first, the practitioner pointed out, there was a divine balance of things to be understood. On one side there had to be a “readiness to will,” a trust in the power of divine Mind and an expectation of success, so that on the other side of the scale, “there may be a performance” of it, the natural result of that trust. I noted that this performance comes “out of that which ye have.” In other words, Paul told the members of the church in Corinth that what they had was enough to meet their need.
It is not about the imbalance of material demand and supply, but about the divine law of supply amply satisfying demand.
I called this idea of a balance of supply and demand “God’s law of equality” in those empty-mailbox days. My expectancy was based on the acceptance that God does not demand of us any more than what we already have in order to get the job done.
The passage I turned to in Second Corinthians continues, “For I mean not that other men be eased, and ye burdened: but by an equality, that now at this time your abundance may be a supply for their want, that their abundance also may be a supply for your want: that there may be equality: as it is written, He that had gathered much had nothing over; and he that had gathered little had no lack” (8:13–15).
Paul here struck at the basic human conception of supply and demand so worshipped in the classroom and in the streets. He explained that the basic inequality in life of a ceaseless demand exceeding supply, leading to haves and have-nots, is not God’s law. We learn, based on the knowledge of God’s abundant and ever-present goodness, that it is not about the imbalance of material demand and supply, but about the divine law of supply amply satisfying demand.
This law of equality, as Paul put forth, is inviolable, and that realization relieved me of feeling burdened by my unsold inventory and empty bank account. What I had was there to meet a need. And what the customer had was there to meet a need. There was, according to God’s law of equality, a balance of abundant supply and ready need—on both sides of the equation. Paul was certainly aware of Jesus’ example of feeding a multitude of people from a seeming limited supply of bread and fish through understanding Love’s law (see Matthew 14:15–21).
In my experience, the mailbox never filled with orders as I had outlined—but something better happened. It was expected good from unexpected sources. Letters and phone calls came from salesmen around the country who saw my product as complementing their already-established product lines in my target market. The result was a friendly, lasting, and productive relationship with these men and women, where their abundance met my need and my abundance met theirs—and the needs of their customers. From those days of staring into the empty mailbox, a strong and profitable company grew and prospered for many years.
In the end, this spiritual approach leaves all satisfied. As Mary Baker Eddy said, “In the scientific relation of God to man, we find that whatever blesses one blesses all, as Jesus showed with the loaves and the fishes,—Spirit, not matter, being the source of supply” (Science and Health, p. 206). It is the ultimate win-win solution.
