The Big Lie

In a radical departure from mainstream Christianity, Christian Science calls the story of Adam and Eve an allegory, the purpose of which is to help us tag faulty perceptions and correct false conclusions about cause and effect. When we buy into a faulty story about the nature of God (as a being which creates evil, or coexists with it) we get the Adam dream - a blighted view of life, a degraded sense of who we are. I call it The Big Lie.

 One thing the big lie says is, you have to till the soil.  To me this means always having to do something to make myself better.  Fix my body, fix my thought, improve myself, accomplish, achieve.  To try, through my efforts,  to go from a state of unworthiness to a state of worthiness.

But life isn’t about self-improvement. Nothing I do makes me better or worse. When I first considered this, I wondered how I would possibly be motivated to do anything good if it absolutely didn't matter.  Then I glimpsed that my motivation to be good comes from goodness itself - the nature of what I am.

Human thought tries to appropriate the I Am, and dress it in all kinds of garb of conditional worthiness.  When I saw Mrs. Eddy's instructions to throw out material thought, it used to sound to me like I was being asked to throw out all the goodness I see in nature, and people, and embrace some abstract concept.  But I now see that she is asking me to throw out the garb of conditions, the box of limitations that error tries to shove good into.

We all know what good is.  We know it by how we respond to it, resonate with it, desire it.  It is a huge thing to say that good is infinite, and in fact all that there is.

The big lie tries to say a couple of things:

* that if everything were good, we wouldn't appreciate it anymore - that we need evil or blandness to make good seem good to us.  Similarly, that if everything is good, goodness isn't such a great thing.  

* that good comes in limited packages, and you have to take very careful care of the packages or you will lose the good.  I had an image of goodness like all the sunshine that was pouring out, free to everything in the landscape, and evil saying, yes, that's very good.  Here, let me put it in this box for you so you can have it.  And then adding - make sure the box doesn't fall apart, and don't let anyone steal it, and be careful who you share it with, because you don't want to lose that good.

The big lie leads us to darkness and despair.

But there's no place for that.  Goodness really is the nature of the universe.  It includes each of us - what we think of as our insides as well as what we think of as our perception.  We can't own it or contain it or make it more or less by our presence.  But we are loved in it.  There's no contest between individuals to be the best or even to be reasonably accepted.  We are all of the One.

The Snapping Jaws

Now that I’ve heard the voice of God at least a few times, I’m finding it easier to not be fooled by other voices. The other voices, of course, say they are God, too - that is, they say they are important and of consequence - that I must listen to them and follow their chain of logic in order to get to some kind of goodness. But I can tell they are not God by their tone of voice. They tend to be scornful, indignant, belittling, angry. Or they are hurt, needy, betrayed. They want to make someone wrong - either me or someone else, or some “they”, or some system. They tempt me to argue with them, but if I argue with them, they have won, for to engage them is to say there’s a power apart from God.

So instead of arguing with them, I tag them. I call them “the snapping jaws.” (Mrs. Eddy calls them “animal magnetism.”) Then I can tell that, though they say otherwise, they are not God’s voice. They are not my voice; they are not someone else’s voice. They may snap and try to take bites out of me or others or our harmony, but they have no substance, so they can’t deplete me or anyone. They win for as long as I don’t recognize them as the snapping jaws. They win if I think someone else is being stupid or mean or insensitive. They win if I think I have to do something to fix someone or myself. But when I acknowledge God’s presence and the inherent perfection of being that comes from that fact, the snapping jaws shrivel up. Their tenacious grip on my attention falls away, and I no longer need to answer to them.

God is never disgusted or disappointed in me, or in any one of Her children. God doesn’t need to speak harshly to me to make me shape up. God is Love, and God’s voice is always loving. Love doesn’t need the manipulative tools of belittling words. Whether such words say they are my voice disapproving of others, or others’ voices disapproving of me, or me fed up with myself, they are not of God, so they have no life. They are the snapping jaws, and they can snap away at the air but they can’t touch me or anyone else. In the quiet that rises when they fall still, I can hear God’s lovely truth.