World aid

IN recent months famous entertainers have raised huge sums of money to help suffering people. Badly needed aid has poured out to the hungry in Africa and to farmers in the United States. Help on such a huge scale may leave some of us wondering what we can do beyond giving a little money. We surely aren't famous and may feel we don't have much talent.

But there is a way in which we can all aid the world and even lessen war. We can cultivate a willingness to let God purify our thoughts and lives.

At this stage of human progress, strong navies and armies may still help prevent war. But no one needs negative character traits such as aggressive self-will or the drive to dominate others or smoldering resentment or hatred. Airplanes and tanks launch weapons that kill people, but ugly mortal traits are the internal combustion that ignites violence. Just the other day a friend said of someone else: ``She hates me and I hate her. We just can't get along.''

That isn't true. We can get along. The thoughts that make hate don't have to consume us and plague the world. They can be annihilated by Christ. Though the corporeal Jesus isn't with us, the divine healing power he so fully expressed --God's Christ--is always with us ``to seek and to save that which was lost.''1 Who feels more lost than someone who has just exploded in a rage, cheated on a loving spouse, or let revenge gnaw at his motives? But Christ Jesus with healing love brought blessing to the adulterous woman and the dishonest tax collector.2 People who have tried to get rid of character flaws know it can be very hard work, like digging weeds out by the roots so they don't sprout again. But this is the grass-roots labor of spiritualizing thought and life, and through the Christ-power it succeeds.

The Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, Mary Baker Eddy, writes, ``Christ is the true idea voicing good, the divine message from God to men speaking to the human consciousness.''3 The Christ regenerates us by helping us understand that our actual, spiritual being is already and eternally perfect.

Obviously, no sinner is perfect in God's likeness. One crushing part of sin is that it can make us feel desperately far from God, who is infinite and perfect. But as painful and fearful as this feeling is, it is good when it forces us to change our basic belief that sin is sometimes justifiable or satisfying. This change leads to a deeper change. It leads to the most satisfying and reasonable thought we can have-- the knowledge that we are children of God.

Who can comprehend such truth through the five physical senses? They insist we are miserable sinners. Yet through the living of such Christly qualities as meekness and gentleness we become aware of spiritual things beyond matter. Mrs. Eddy writes, ``The Christ is incorporeal, spiritual,--yea, the divine image and likeness, dispelling the illusions of the senses....''4 Through the power of the Christ, felt and lived, we become aware of ourselves as God's precious, sinless offspring.

The only way mankind is saved from sin is through cultivating a Christlike consciousness. And this way is scientific, because it produces consistent, predictable results. To let the Christ-power into our lives brings us more harmony and joy. It also enables us humbly to glorify God and to give Him credit for all good. The world may glorify glamour and money and power. But at its depths, mankind is yearning for spirituality. In the struggle to aid the world, everyone can help.

1Luke 19:10. 2See John 8:1-11, Luke 19:1-10. 3Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 332. 4Ibid. DAILY BIBLE VERSE Look not every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of others. Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus.

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