Be impressed with the good, not the evil
When you read the news and listen to your neighbor’s latest view of world events, are you more impressed with the good or with the evil you hear? Hopefully, you are totally impressed by the good, and not impressed AT ALL by the evil!
There is much opportunity around the world to heal humanity of evil events. But to be an effective healer, one’s thought needs to be dominated by the goodness and love of God, and not impressed by evil.
Can darkness rid the world of darkness? No! It’s light that dispels darkness.
A consciousness embroiled and impressed with evil is like darkness. It is of no help to eliminating the evil of mortal mind.
A consciousness filled with spiritual truth and love is like light. It is what the world needs, for spiritual mindedness is what destroys evil.
Evil is a lie and a liar (John 8:44), Jesus Christ taught.
When you hear reports of evil, put evil in its proper place of LIE! Don’t ignore its claim or pretend like it doesn’t exist to the human sense of things. Do something about it. Stay in a spiritually inspired state of divine Mind that dissolves the evil sense presented and replaces it with an understanding of Love’s power and presence.
Don’t be impressed with evil. Be impressed with God’s omnipotence instead! It’s the more constructive and healing way to live.
Thank you for your guidance today. Sometimes it does seem as though darkness is real and difficult to overcome. In addition to the Bible and Mrs. Eddy’s writings, I love to use SpiritView and the comments of its followers to help keep me focused on the right path. I so appreciate the support that you and others provide by articles published in our CS publications. I can use this Light to overcome any belief of doubt or darkness in my daily life. Thank you for your loving kindness in helping all of us live in this beautiful freedom of Truth, Life.and Love.
So much good in this message of love
Thank you Evan!
I love the “Do something about it.” Christian Science is not about “ignoring” a subject, as critics would wrongly claim. Jesus never ignored a problem, – he healed what came his way, – always seeing the good and proving it. Thank you Evan for your call to action.
“Undisturbed amid the jarring testimony of
the material senses , Science, still enthroned
is unfolding to mortals the immutable,
harmonious, divine Principle ~ is unfolding
Life and life universe, ever present and
eternal.” S&H p 306-25
I woke up with this in thought. Thanks Father/
Mother Love … and Evan, and all the contributors.
Happy divine day, every day.. ♥️
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, ..
If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit.
(Galatians 5:22, 25)
Keeping our hearts and mind so filled with Truth and Love that there is no room for any thing else!
If I do not want to be impressed or wrongly influenced or oppressed or judged, then it’s logically consistent that I stop wanting or trying to impress or influence or control or judge others. We are not here to impress mortals. We are here to express the immortal One. Only infinite Love’s judgment matters, only eternal Truth’s gracious will. Not my or anyone else’s will, petty ego, fear, unexamined cultural taken-for-granted beliefs, and subconscious socialization and trauma reactions,
We are not soft mud or manure that is walked on all over and then dries hard into someone else’s foot prints, unable to sustain living nurture for others. We are not paper on which inked letters are pressed down hard to prevent or obscure new messages. We are not lifeless metal or branded cattle or slaves forever stuck with the results of a one-moment burning forced mark pressed onto us. We are not marred or badly marked for life.
That reminds me of a true family story about a newspaper man’s mechanical press used to impress newsprint with inked metal letters. In Blaine, Washington, in the United States near the border with British Columbia, Canada during the global great depression after the 1929 stock market crash, the local homes, businesses, and farms were threatened with bank foreclosure and the community was threatened with mass houselessness, poverty, and forced migration breaking up families and community. Everyone seem to be very impressed and oppressed by this fear and despair where it seems so hopelessly unfair. They thought that they needed to have money to pay the banks but they did not have enough US dollars or a way to get those US dollars. So my ancestor Albert Balch and the local newspaper editor, decided to print their own money. They had no paper or way to get paper. They had the printers press and some ink. They had leftover wood scraps that were going to be thrown away and burned because they could not form boards or timbers. Albert wanted to promote sandwich board which we now think of as plywood as a way to prevent deforestation and destruction of the economy and community and and to prevent the waste that would otherwise be burned and cause local health problems. So Albert promoted the idea of “Blaine bucks” or wooden bills and coins made of sandwich board or thin strips of wood glued together to be actually stronger than a solid piece of wood of the same dimensions. Albert had wanted to go from extreme poverty up The social economic ladder so he had earlier been a penpal to some of the wealthiest people in the world that he knew of. So he wrote the Emperor of Japan and czar of Russia and queen of England etc. and told them that they needed to buy Blaine bucks as a fun conversation piece and collectors item and investment. With the money he got turned into US dollars, and with the local economy of people using Blaine bucks to trade goods and services while building the economy of hope and trust, they had enough money left over to build a Chamber of Commerce building Out of sandwich board. The community, economy, environment, and physical mental health of the people were saved. My grandfather later was a major developer building most of the housing in Seattle and plywood is important to the construction industry and prevented our forests, aquifers, climate systems, food system, and public health from being destroyed or seriously harmed sooner. These two men refused to be impressed and oppressed and distressed by what most of the people in the world believed was true. They refused to be limited by false assumptions and a cruel economy. They had fun. And this confident openness to new ideas and creative problem-solving gave them courage for a future challenges and future work for social justice and environmental protection and housing and strong community that was progressively more inclusive. Neither man was perfect but they had the perfect willingness and character strengths to use their opportunities to perfectly help those around them at that time. A few people at the top of the global capitalist system might not want others to be empowered by the facts and to challenge the divide and conquer fear manipulation, by hiding this history and other examples that show countless inspiring actions of resistance to injustice where local folks came up with solutions that are relevant today. But just because we do not know of these true stories does not mean that the truth that we need at any given moment is here for each of us to learn and act on and we have what it takes to do that with joy and love. We have our own internal kingdom of heaven within us that prevents us from being wrongly impressed and oppressed and distressed. But even if we insist on using a press, like these two men, we can use it for the greater good.
Thank you. Fantastic story.
Dear Edith,
Thank you very much for yet another wonderful work.
I have been in the building industry for a very long time, It’s innovation and invention that you told of on each and every new job.
I love to hear the fruition of new ideas.
Yesterday has shaped today. We will continue to build till it is no longer necessary….
Thank you, Edith! I, too, have a family legacy of inventiveness arising from optimism and seeing opportunity in the midst of want (like your grandfather, my grandfather during the dust bowl and depression in Kansas). It proves Mary Baker Eddy’s description of Mind, which cannot be constrained nor affected by world news- after all, the mortal world isn’t God’s world, unless we see harmony, peace, prosper, abundance, as God knows. While I found Christian Science later in life, I was raised to look for opportunities and solutions whenever there seemed to be a problem. And now I know this isn’t mere human will or effort; it is reflecting God and being God’s witness.
Thanks to Evan for opening up this conversation. I love exploring ideas together each morning.
Love to you all.
Lisa
Great story, Edith!!! Jesus taught in parables which are stories.
People remember stories and glean great truth from them.
Everyone;
I have delivered the entire script as promised on yesterday’s SpiritView. The comparative dialog is an excerpt form the original that I have.
Thanks Angie for your relative research. I hope this copy gives you another view of it. It may have been a treatment from Mrs. Eddy’s followers. But the more I consider it, the style is Mrs. Eddy.
She had a household of very devoted students and made many demands on them.
I read “We Knew Mary Baker Eddy”. It helped me get a glimpse of how much study and performance contributed to what we have as our resource today.
Could this have been a declaration for her very own household? It’s a good one for everyone in our spiritual household of Christian Science….
I found a typed copy of Mary Baker Eddy’s writing that you mentioned, in my mother’s personal effects. and have kept it close at hand. to read and ponder. I looked through all the 1883 journals online and didn’t see it although my mother identified it as being from there.
Thank you Evan for such clarity.
& thanks to all the contractors.
‘Ascent to wholeness’:
https://journal.christianscience.com/shared/view/2ab0p03a36a?s=e
Angie thank you for sharing the wonderful article Ascent to Wholeness. As Evan says we should be impressed with the good, I am impressed with the goodness in your sharing as well as that of all here on Spiritview,.
I especially loved these two quotes from Mrs. Eddy which are mentioned in the article.
“Matter has no more substance and reality in our day-dreams than it has in our night-dreams.’
“As Mind is immortal,” Mrs. Eddy states in Science and Health, “the phrase mortal mind implies something untrue and therefore unreal; and as the phrase is used in teaching Christian Science, it is meant to designate that which has no real existence.”
Edith, thank you for this wonderful thought provoking account from your family ancestry. Also for your clear assessment of what man is NOT! Much inspiration and many lessons from your contribution.
Evan, I am eternally grateful for the uplift, expansion of consciousness, spiritual strength and conviction I receive from this precious venue. God bless you.
Ditto what Virginia from Carmel said!
Thank you Evan! I just read today’s SpiritView a second time and more thoroughly. It is such an inspiring and healing spiritual view. It is healing my thinking. Regrettably I cannot say that I am unimpressed when I hear or read bad news
But at least at the same time I know clearly that that is a profane lie, as God’s plan for His precious creation is never bad news or event.
I pray, and it’s the need of us all, that my thoughts may be more and more dominated by the goodness and love of God and may totally filled with it!
There are so many hymns in our CS hymnal book which are so comforting: I love the 3rd verse of hymn 12, quite suitable here:
“O Father-Mother God, who’s plan
Has given dominion unto man,
In Thine own image we may see
Man pure and upright, whole and free
And ever through our work shall shine
That light who’s glory, Lord, is Thine!”
Seeing the good is acknowledging the authority of The Christ. It is seeing that good, God is the only power.
In Thy Light
God says I AM ALL
and infinite diversity of Soul
is imaged forth as man,
beloved, beautiful, secure.
“In the beginning” never was in
embryo; nor is man’s measure
from a family history, environment,
or circumstance.
Mind, Soul, knows all that has been,
is, will be. Soul makes His image as
the climax of His glorious infinity.
God’s love, like clearings in the meadow
of our days, reveals man’s full divinity.