Don't defer you liabilities!


Notes and references for 12/24/00
Don’t defer your liabilities.


At this Christmas season it seems timely to re-examine or Christliness. The “manifestation of God that comes to the flesh to destroy incarnate error” comes to our human experiences as inspiration and an every present guide. In fact, you are the manifestation of God and possess the Christ consciousness. You are the Christ ideal, God’s beloved child. Just as the Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever, so you are an infinite idea of God. To experience this inspiration, guidance and ideal we might speak of “putting on the robes of Christ”.

This inspiration is a lifting up of our thought, a purifying of your motives and a higher concept of ourselves. It means that you are loving yourself and seeing that you are worthy of great things. The higher and more inspired your thought the more or just what you need to drawn to you. It doesn’t matter if it is romance, a career choice, or a parking place. You draw into your experience that which is comfortable with your thought. It has nothing to do with what you look like or how much money you have. Nothing to do with personality or hair style.

Here is how Mrs. Eddy put it to Irving Tomlinson when he was elected First reader of The Mother Church.: My 247:10-30

TO A FIRST READER

Beloved Student: — Christ is meekness and Truth
12 enthroned. Put on the robes of Christ, and you will
be lifted up and will draw all men unto you. The
little fishes in my fountain must have felt me when I
15 stood silently beside it, for they came out in orderly
line to the rim where I stood. Then I fed these
sweet little thoughts that, not fearing me, sought their
18 food of me.
God has called you to be a fisher of men. It is not a
stern but a loving look which brings forth mankind to
21 receive your bestowal, — not so much eloquence as tender
persuasion that takes away their fear, for it is Love alone
that feeds them.
24 Do you come to your little flock so filled with divine
food that you cast your bread upon the waters? Then
be sure that after many or a few days it will return
27 to you.
The little that I have accomplished has all been
done through love, — self-forgetful, patient, unfaltering
30 tenderness.


Putting on the robes of Christ is really a process of cleansing our “soiled garments” or soiled thinking. In the passage below you are the “wanderer”. There is a great word in the last part…”escutcheon”

ESCUTCHEON
There should be no blot on the escutcheon of our Christliness when we offer our gift upon the alter. (Ret 86:14) Students Ref.: n. a shield. 1. A shield on which a coat of arms is represented; the shield of a family. 2. That part of a vessel’s stern on which her name is written.

Your family name as a child of God is “a Christian Scientist”. Your family’s very reputation and tradition is a direct lineage from the Christ ideal. Lets look at the passage. Ret 86:0-16

Exemplification

1 To energize wholesome spiritual warfare, to rebuke
vainglory, to offset boastful emptiness, to crown
3 patient toil, and rejoice in the spirit and power of Christian
Science, we must ourselves be true. There is but one way
of doing good, and that is to do it! There is but one way of
6 being good, and that is to be good!
Art thou still unacquainted with thyself? Then be in-
troduced to this self. "Know thyself!" as said the classic
9 Grecian motto. Note well the falsity of this mortal self!
Behold its vileness, and remember this poverty-stricken
"stranger that is within thy gates." Cleanse every stain
12 from this wanderer's soiled garments, wipe the dust from
his feet and the tears from his eyes, that you may behold
the real man, the fellow-saint of a holy household. There
15 should be no blot on the escutcheon of our Christliness
when we offer our gift upon the altar.


You r gift this Christmas and everyday is the pure thinking (garments) that you place upon the alter. They result in health, happiness and success. They also result in healing. So, lets now apply this Christ ideal or Christ consciousness to the practical treatment of sickness. Look at S & H 230:27-11

27 We think that we are healed when a disease disap-
pears, though it is liable to reappear; but we are never
thoroughly healed until the liability to be The true
30 ill is removed. So-called mortal mind or the healing
mind of mortals being the remote, predisposing, and
the exciting cause of all suffering, the cause of disease
1 must be obliterated through Christ in divine Science, or
the so-called physical senses will get the victory.
3 Unless an ill is rightly met and fairly overcome by
Truth, the ill is never conquered. If God destroys not
sin, sickness, and death, they are not de- Destruction
6 stroyed in the mind of mortals, but seem to of all evil
this so-called mind to be immortal. What God cannot
do, man need not attempt. If God heals not the sick,
9 they are not healed, for no lesser power equals the infinite
All-power; but God, Truth, Life, Love, does heal the
sick through the prayer of the righteous.

The key word this week is liability. We must never defer our liabilities. Balancing the books, so to speak, occurs when we cleanse our garments and purify our thinking. Thus, our liability is our belief in matter and our assets are measured by our understanding and practice of Spirit. If we keep accumulating liabilities then “the physical senses will get the victory.” Don’t carry the baggage of material thinking into your decision making, your relationships or you careers.

This sentence from Mis 277:23-24 is helpful. I am not asking you to pretend that a problem does not exist in your human experience, but rather to turn from the problem and focus your full attention upon God’s power to come to the rescue of every human condition.

No evidence before the material senses can close my
24 eyes to the scientific proof that God, good, is supreme.


In We Knew Mary Baker Eddy, Emma Shipman tells of Mrs. Eddy and the Class of 1898:

A pupil asked, “Why is it that our healing work is not always the same? One day, our cases are healed, and another day, with the same amount of work, a case is not healed.” Mrs. Eddy had a pencil in her hand; she balanced it on one finger, and then tipping it to one side, she said, as I recall, It is because we have too much weight on the side of matter; then tipping the pencil in the opposite direction, she added that some day we shall have more weight on the side of Spirit; then we shall always heal the sick.

I will call this Mike’s 51% rule! Make sure that spiritual thinking is dominant in your thought, then you will heal.


Now let’s look at three specific areas of mortal thought that need our attention. They are three dualisms or parallels than neutralize our healing work. They are (1) The notion of chance, (2) Panthiesm (Life in matter, as in a drug), and (3) Infidelity and sensuality.

First, The notion of chance. Gambling is not an activity of a Christian Scientist. You cannot occasionally bet, play the lottery, put a nickel in a slot or have fun at that poker game and at the same time become exempt from the laws of chance and probability when it come to accidents. Read again this familiar passage: 424:5
Accidents are unknown to God, or immortal Mind,
6 and we must leave the mortal basis of belief Accidents
and unite with the one Mind, in order to unknown
change the notion of chance to the proper sense to God
9 of God's unerring direction and thus bring out harmony.

The second dualism is Pantheism or the belief of Life in matter, with special emphasis on the belief that there is power in a drug. Any drug…caffeine, nicotine, alcohol, medicine (even a cough drop or an aspirin). You cannot partake of an occasional drink at a party or a cough drop when you are ill or coffee to stay awake and at the same time denounce the power of a drug when it come to treating yourself. You don’t get to have it both ways. It is not that these things are so bad. This is not a lecture in morality. It is, rather a logical argument that you will have more to deal with when your have conflicting beliefs about the same thing. And, since these are the easiest things to give up why not start with them? It is the little, seemingly harmless, compromises that get us into trouble when we need the strenght to stand firm with a really important decision. 27:17
Jesus' parables explain Life as never mingling with
18 sin and death. He laid the axe of Science at the root
of material knowledge, that it might be ready to cut
down the false doctrine of pantheism, — that God, or
21 Life, is in or of matter.

335:2
The theory,
3 that Spirit is distinct from matter but must Infinite
pass through it, or into it, to be individualized, Spirit
would reduce God to dependency on matter, and establish
6 a basis for pantheism.

Third, is sensualism or infidelity. One cannot have that occasional fling, casual physical relationship that seems harmless at the time and expect to have the strength to resist the belief of pain. You cannot at the same time believe in pleasure from the sensual but dismiss the reality of pain from the same senses. One cannot cheat in a relationship and profess fidelity to Truth.

Recognition of these dualisms are summed up in these passage: Mis 271

"Choose you this day whom ye will serve." Cleanse
your mind of the cobwebs which spurious "compounds"
15 engender. Before considering a subject that is unworthy
of thought, take in this axiomatic truism: "Trust her
not, she's fooling thee;" and Longfellow is right.

S&H 360:17
Either Spirit or matter is your model. If you
18 try to have two models, then you practically have none.
Like a pendulum in a clock, you will be thrown back and
forth, striking the ribs of matter and swinging between the
21 real and the unreal.

Un 49:15
15 You cannot simultaneously serve the mammon of
materiality and the God of spirituality. There are not
two realities of being, two opposite states of existence.
18 One should appear real to us, and the other unreal, or we
lose the Science of being. Standing in no basic Truth, we
make "the worse appear the better reason," and the un-
21 real masquerades as the real, in our thought.


Balance those books!


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