Max McLean Reads the Bible without Anger

I frequently listen to Max McLean, narrator of the Listener’s Bible, on my iPOD, especially at night before going to sleep. McLean does an excellent job of blending vivid expression and theological comprehension to make listening to the Bible interesting and rewarding.

Last night, I was listening to the Psalms and a picture of clarity popped into life. McLean read from Psalm 95, “For forty years I was angry with that generation; I said, ‘They are a people whose hearts go astray, and they have not known my ways.’” This was supposedly God reminiscing about pulling the children of Israel out slavery only to have them not credit or respect God. So, the children wandered around in a desert for forty years while believing God was angry with them.

We interpret everything through the lens of our own mental attitude, and my attitude is such that I don’t have an angry God. Needless to say, the Bible appeared to contradict my sense of God as peaceful and just an all-around wise yet composed Being, able to guide all thought in a way that brings satisfaction, not anger.

Anyway, the picture of clarity was that as much as I view my own reality through my own mental attitude, the children of Israel did also. Their mental attitude however was whining about not having enough food consequently all they could sense was an angry God. God wasn’t angry. The human perception was annoyed, indignant, irate, therefore, that is what they automatically pinned on God.

Lessons learned: I can trust the view of a peaceful strong God that manifests an uncomplaining attitude. And, Max McLean did a bang-up job of recording the Bible.

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Spiritual Thoughts Replace Depression

At work, in the break room, a pill box was laying next to the sink. Someone has been taking those pills. Then, Judith sprinted into the break room and with a relieved look on her face, picked up the pill box, said, “Thank goodness, my pill box is still here,” and looking up at her co-worker, continued with, “ I have depression.”

Judith’s apparent nobility at managing the fashionable condition of depression was, well, depressing. Most of us have felt sad and worthless. During those times, our thinking gets muddled and in general, life feels like a black hole. Oddly, Judith’s therapy for her clinical depression includes pills that come with the side effects of muddled thinking and constipation.

An increasing number of doctors, psychiatrists, and psychologists are concluding that the way we think, act, react, and feel can be a powerful influence on our physical and mental health. This conclusion is not new. In Old Testament Biblical times, “Hezekiah repented of the pride of his heart,” and life got better. To repent is to think and act different.

However, thinking different isn’t assuming positive thinking is an elixir, although optimism is better than pessimism. Thought is very powerful on the mind and body, but the key to healing is to know the thought of Truth, not the positive thoughts of human. Medically speaking, there is no universal standard of chemicals in the brain that can guarantee happiness for every human being; neither is there a set of human thoughts that can produce wellbeing scientifically. Religiously speaking, faith, focused on the scientific sense of God, benefits body and mind. The medicine of Truth can erase depression.

Administer this alterative Truth with a faith or conviction in a spiritual reality: “God never made depression. Depression is not necessary.” This truth understood can remove the mistake that people are bound to be depressed and our thoughts and actions can be grounded on the truth.

 

 

Abstract Spirituality and Keeping Our Identity

Spirituality can be an abstract subject. But, when you think about it, spirituality has to be abstract, or else we all would lose our identity.

I’ve always thought it rather humorous when people use material means to identify themselves. They wear funky clothes, get tattoos, or piercings. I’m just as guilty. So, I laugh at myself too when I go buy a sporty car, only to get on the road and discover a gajillion other sporty cars just like mine passing me!

I’ve learned to appreciate the abstractness of spirituality, especially when raising children. As a young mother, I learned quickly not to treat each child the same. All children have their own spiritual identity and it only developed when I made unique decisions based on spirituality instead of my own opinions or expectations.Many times, I’d ask in prayer for an open mind to hear exactly what a child was to develop next. The answers seemed abstract at first such as, child #1 will progress in courage while child #2 will mature in patience, and child #3 will advance in intellect. But as soon as the spiritual direction was pointed out, the manifestation became clear. Child #1 and I went bungee jumping. Child #2 joined the Young Marines. Child #3 jumped a grade in school.

My husband and I had 2 daughters of our own, plus we fostered children for 15 years. I never in my wildest dreams could have figured out how they all got to where they are today. But we had a ton of fun and very very little troubles. I still appreciate the abstractness of spirituality.

From 21st Century Science and Health, “The scientific fact that our real identity and the universe are evolved from Spirit, and so are spiritual, is as fixed in divine Science as is the proof that human beings gain the sense of health only as they lose the sense of sin and disease. Human beings can never understand God’s creation while believing that man and woman is a creator. God’s children already created will be recognized only as we find the truth of being. Thus it is that the real spiritual identity appears in proportion as the false and materialistic disappears. The continuity of God’s children continues and we cannot lose our sense of increasing number in God’s infinite plan.”

Identity not lost

How can the brain, heart, blood, DNA, etc. be our identity? If our real nature is the material bodily structure, a portion of our being would be gone if a limb was amputated; a surgeon could remove our manhood or womanhood; or bacteria would annihilate our existence. What happens to the identity of an organ recipient? Or, how can DNA be the foundation of our identity? DNA mutates, replicates, and eventually dies therefore it can’t be a source of life. After a person is gone their DNA is still here on earth, so where is the individual? On another note, people have repeatedly proven that the loss of a limb cannot take away their manliness or womanliness. Many people, classified as disabled, have presented more nobility, more manliness and womanliness, than the polished athlete or glamour model—teaching society that true identity and nature comes from spirituality, consciousness.”

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4 Ways Christian Scientists Can Upgrade

Four ways Christian Scientists self-sabotage their spiritual growth and run people off.

1. By regurgitating the words, “If you read Science and Health, you will be healed.”
2. When, after listening to a sincere story about someone else’s healing, you say, “That’s not Christian Science.”
3. By using out-dated language and outgrown knowledge as a means of explaining Christian Science.
4. By assuming that reading a Bible Lesson or going to church will guarantee healing and peace.

Four ways Christian Scientists confirm spiritual growth and come across to other people as inviting.

1. By reading texts on different religions and being able to find similar principles.
2. By engaging readers who read modern editions of the Bible.
3. By educating yourself in the arts of language and knowledge.
4. By making your own courageous decisions, and acting on them.

The Spirit that Watches our Back

Yesterday, Pete told me a story worth repeating. Not so much because we need to hear stories like this during this financial crunch, but because “the way” the story was told was poignant, done with respect.

Before Pete began his story, he was somber—no bragging, no thinking he deserved something special, but courteous to what he calls, “The Spirit that watches our back.”

Here’s the story: A while back, their family car was totaled and the insurance company gave them $4000. Pete stared at the check and wondered, do they use the money to buy a reliable used car or do they use the money to pay off the unpaid bills and then drive the clunker car parked in the back of the house?

The clunker car is not very well suited for their family of 4, but because it felt better to follow the intuition that led them pay off the bills, they quietly paid their bills and pulled out the car that did get them around even though with a lot of moaning and clacking.

Then a check for $1500 was given to Pete for work he had previously done. The same day, a friend from another state called and told him about a 1999 reliable car they had for sell. Pete asked how much the car cost. $1500 was the answer. So, they bought it.

Good things are happening and it is important to share the reasons for our hope because it helps to get rid of despair and complacency. The economy does not have the upper hand. Spirit has infinite resources of wisdom, ingenuity, humility, even health, that can be tapped into and experienced.

From I Peter 3:14, “give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect.”

Lip Biting No Longer an Influence

Out of nowhere, our 6 year old daughter began biting her bottom lip until it was raw. Telling her to stop biting her lip only aggravated the situation. So, I prayed a bewildered prayer and trusted a power higher than myself to take another step to help our daughter. As was my habit, I went to her school to volunteer in her classroom. Immediately when walking into the classroom, I knew what to do: bring my mind into agreement with community compassion; sounds obscure, but soon after, our daughter stopped biting her lip.

What happened?

Our daughter’s class friend, Kyra, was biting her bottom lip and our daughter was being influenced to copy the damaging fixation. I considered manipulating the friendship so that they could not spend time together, but Kyra needed a friend. Kyra’s dad was a doctor who lately had been headline news in the community newspaper because a few of his patients were convicting him of indecent practices.

I knew the family. The news related to the dad was a heavy blow to Kyra’s mom and Kyra’s older sisters. Kyra’s mom was searching Scriptures for answers. Her religious background was different from mine, therefore I respected her path and we didn’t talk about it. I treated her as I normally did.

It was obvious that the news (now known and being gossiped about by the local mass populace) was harshly affecting Kyra and her sisters. My peace was restored as I read this from 21^st Century Science and Health, “Humanity must learn that the influences of propaganda or crowd thinking are powerless. Crowd thinking is oppressive, but only a phase of nothingness. Christian Science devastates the kingdom of evil, and preeminently promotes good-will and virtue in families and therefore in the community…God is not influenced by human beings.”

Human beings automatically assume we have power to influence. We whine, threaten, coerce, or get pushy, but loss of control persists because the countercosmology that God is the only influence is the only source of control. Therefore, instead of giving human beings power to influence, my prayer was attentive to the influence of Love and Truth. If Kyra’s dad needed to be corrected by the truth, it would happen and it can be juxtaposed with love, not a “feel sorry for” love, but a “demand for integrity on the job,” love.

Nasty things happen in life and we get through the nastiness gracefully when Truth and Love, instead of peer pressure or crowd thinking, are influencing our thoughts and actions.

The prayer, grounded on the scientific fact that Truth and Love are the only influence, proved effective. Our daughter stopped biting her lip and did well in school, even while continuing her friendship with Kyra. Her dad did have to correct his ways. It wasn’t easy for the family but they were not totally ostracized in the community and the mom and daughters matured nobly.

Got Married Back in the Olden Days

These are the flowers Doug sent me for our wedding anniversary, yesterday. A dozen roses, very beautiful. I would insert a picture of us on our wedding day, but we got married back in the olden days when they didn’t have digital cameras. And, I don’t have a scanner to scan the yellowing photo.

Doug and I are still going strong. But, being married hasn’t always been easy. The best advice that helped me see past the marriage troubles,  is advice that I found in the Bible, although because practical wise advice is available to the universe, I’m sure this advice is found elsewhere. The advice is basically, what God joined together, don’t bother separating; which coincides with, don’t bother putting together what God didn’t.

Now, what God put together isn’t particular human beings.  God is divine Spirit and deals with spiritual ideas and spiritual beings, therefore God put together compassion, humor, joy, appreciation, aplomb, tenderness, courage, and strength. God did not put together anger, arrogance, resentment, or impatience. And, because it is impossible to add a bit of anger to God’s creation, when I feel angry toward Doug, I back off and peace comes.

Doug has been living 3000 miles away from me since last October. He got a job in Seattle. I’ve been holding down the fort here in upstate New York. Thankfully, the advice I just mentioned above holds true even through space. In fact, divine Science teaches there is no space in Love, God.  Marriage signifies an individual and collective path of spiritual unity with divine Love.

Joining the Force of Spiritual Consciousness

The study of mind makes headlines, however, the preoccupation with biological surface activity predominates and matter is given precedence over mind, or the human mind is given precedence over the divine Mind.

But we can join forces with thinkers throughout history who have discovered conclusive evidence of a spiritual consciousness that can positively affect mind and body.

In 1946, T. Brosse wrote in A Psychophysiological Study: Main Currents in Modern Thought, “Thus [concludes the French scientist, who had gone to India especially to study and verify the yogi control of these processes] we find these yogis are masters over diverse activities. Knowing nothing about the structure of their organs, they are however the incontestable masters of appropriate functions, moreover, they enjoy a magnificent state of health.”

In the 19th century, Mary Baker Eddy wrote this idea in her book, Science and Health, “Divine Science brings to the body the sunlight of Truth, which invigorates and purifies. Christian Science acts as a medicinal, neutralizing error with Truth. It balances the chemical reactions, expels abnormal body fluids, dissolves humors, rehabilitates degenerated or injured muscles, and restores bones to wellness. The effect of this Science is to adapt the human mind to a change of attitude from which it may yield to the peace of divine Mind.”

Streamlining a multilateral vision of inclusivity sheds light on the force of spiritual consciousness.

Flooding in the World

Reading about the current flooding, especially the Mississippi River flooding, I can’t help but be reminded of a friend’s interpretation of the Biblical story of Noah and the Ark and the great flood. Noah was told by God to build a huge Ark and load it with his family, animals, and tons of food, because God decided to flood the earth to drown out the rampant sin going on.

My friend thought, If God only reveals goodness, and God is All-in-all, then the flood had to be a flood of goodness, a flood of love drowning out resentment and indignation.

For some reason this made sense to me. And, then one evening while cooking dinner, rather wearily, one of the children wanted my attention. I consciously was aware of impatience being triggered in my mind, and all of a sudden a flood of patience overcame me. I wasn’t specifically asking God for patience, but I did feel Christ (not a human man, but spirit) actively working in consciousness and that evening I responded. I gave the appropriate amount of attention to the child, finished dinner and the evening went better than fine.

So, how does this recollection of Love flooding us with patience help with the present flooding going on in the south? It doesn’t help, physically. But, all practical physical help comes from a mental impetus, a thought, therefore, I figure, a thought of Love’s flooding is better than the thought that the south is being punished as if God could send something bad. Spiritual thoughts are powerful, useful and lead to practical action when sent out to the universe.

Free Download of 4th Edition Chapter from Science and Health

The 4th edition of 21st Century Science and Health is in the works. You can download and check out the chapter titled: Some Misconceptions Debunked by clicking below. Have a great week!

Some Misconceptions Debunked, 4th edition