The rule of law

Most of us have been rebellious children at times, or like rebellious children, wanting to disregard what we know is right, trying to rationalize disobedience to strict standards of integrity. Many of us have discovered such desires to be cruel deceptions. If we yield to them, they turn out to be worse than shortsighted. They are counterproductive. They carry within themselves their own penalty; that is, they tend to undermine our recognition of God's rule of law.

God as creator and cause of all that is real - of the spiritual universe and spiritual man - holds His universe and man under His rule of perpetual perfection. The real man - our actual selfhood - and the real universe cannot evade or avoid God's demand for perfection; they never have; they don't now; and they never will. Men, women, and children, however, appear subject to varying degrees of ignorance or disobedience. By gaining a love for God and the real man through our understanding of Him as the loving Father-Mother of all, we can see more of the effect of God's law in our experience.

Does God's law apply only to certain individuals? No, it applies to all mankind - to every group, class, nation, race, continent, and hemisphere. But we have to know this with prayerful insistence and persistence. The more clearly we know it, and the more specifically we act on the basis of the universality of God's law, the more people and nations and governments the world over will conform to it. In other words, the more the already-established law of God's eternal harmony will be recognized and implemented in human affairs.

Jesus predicated one's entering the kingdom of God on being good, and implied that spiritual attainment by no means wiped out the need for demonstrated morality. In speaking of the Hebrew law, he said: ''Whosoever ... shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven: but whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I say unto you, That except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven.'' n1

n1 Matthew 5:19,20

In the face of terrorism, broken agreements, disrespect for the courts, we can help sort things out in the direction of global justice and progress by endeavoring to acknowledge God's law in all that we think and say and do. This dynamic statement by Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, merits our pondering: ''God's law is in three words, 'I am All;' and this perfect law is ever present to rebuke any claim of another law. God pities our woes with the love of a Father for His child, - not by becoming human, and knowing sin, or naught, but by removing our knowledge of what is not.'' n2

n2 No and Yes, P.30

We can learn a little more each day of the deceptive - and powerless - nature of evil and of the impossibility of the world staying out of kilter forever. God , good, being All and all-power, His law must prevail. It prevails now, though appearances often contradict that fact. Yet every time we choose honesty instead of deception, every time we put the good of all ahead of our personal preference , every time we respond to the healing power of divine Love, we bring our lives more securely under God's law.

God's will is health, joy, and purity for His children. His omnipotence enforces His will through spiritual law, and it is ultimately ''done in earth, as it is in heaven.'' n3 Unenlightened material sense doesn't agree with this conclusion, but spiritual sense - the understanding that God is infinite Spirit, who creates, knows, and supports only what is good - shows us that God's law is supreme. We can accept this law, trust it, and begin to prove its good effects in our experience.

n3 Matthew 6:10

DAILY BIBLE VERSE Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the un godly, nor standeth in the wayof sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful. But his delight is in the law of the Lord; and in his law doth he meditate day and night. And he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth is fruit in his season; his leaf also shall not wither; and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper. Psalms 1:1-3ew 6:10.

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