Do you fret over other people’s opinions? If so, it might signal an opportunity to put opinion in its proper place.
Mary Baker Eddy’s statement on opinion always arrests my attention. She wrote, “In Christian Science mere opinion is valueless” (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 341).
Mere opinion is valueless in Christian Science because Christian Science is all about pursuit of truth, and human opinion is often way off in its understanding of truth.
One definition of opinion is, “A view or judgment formed about something, not necessarily based on fact or knowledge” (Oxford Languages).
To draw correct conclusions about anything, it’s critical to get to the truth about the situation. Another’s opinion may or may not be based on truth.
To draw correct conclusions and do justice to yourself and the other person, see past opinion to truth. Ask, “What is the truth that needs to be known?” Don’t let personal sense sway your feelings or alter your actions. Steer your thought clear of their shoals and dangers, and settle in a clear sense of truth.
Opinions are like chaff to wheat. They need to be shucked and left behind. Truth is what matters!
P.S. It’s humbling to remember that your opinion is no more important than another’s.
Excellent Evan. Many , many years ago when studying problem solving during math classes at school, we were taught to only pay attention to the facts of the problem which were needed for its solution. Common sense really but it was a lesson to be learned as countless ‘red herrings’ were included to confuse or take up valuable time when in an exam situation.
So it is with human opinion. We only need to listen and act on the truth of a given situation …can be quite hard at times to eradicate what mortal mind would want you to see…
‘Hold thought steadfastly to the enduring , the good and the true…’ S&H pg261
This little quote has helped me many a time when another persons opinion has seemed overbearing . I’m still working on seeing only the Divine message or Gods thoughts to consciousness rather than mortal criticism and opinion. Love to all.❣️
Thank you Evan and also for yesterday’s video on YouTube!
Thank you Barbara, a very helpful further insight ♡
What is the video you mention? And thanks Even for this thoughtful and timely but also timeless meesage.
It’s called ‘Expect to stay healthy when mingling with the public’ It was uploaded yesterday…u-tube….so very recent. Hope you find it as it’s such helpful guidance. Enjoy.
Actually, that was a premature upload that you caught. It will be posted within a week or so here on the blog. So, be patient. It will be out in public soon! Thanks.
Glad to hear this and look forward to the posting.
Thanks Evan for bringing forward this essential point.
‘False Beliefs & Opinions Overcome’;
https://sentinel.christianscience.com/shared/view/pmqgnaryiy?s=e
& It’s sad how insidious this type of error is:
“Self-love is more opaque than a solid body. In patient obedience to a patient God, let us labor to dissolve with the universal solvent of Love the adamant of error, — self-will, self-justification, and self-love, — which wars against spirituality and is the law of sin and death.” [SH 242:9–20]
Perfect for my day. Thank you
Thank you very much for this, Evan! I love your post scriptum…. 🙂 It is something I often have to think about …
Thank you also for all the comments, everyone, and especially Angie for the link to the article!
So many options going around about the vaccine and masks.. Mrs. Eddy really put opinion in its place in the quote used today.
Then there is Jesus “Ye shall know the truth snd the truth shall set you free”..
That gives us a solid position to take..
What could be better to trust than Truth (God) in every situation and every circumstance.
OUR TRUE NATURE
https://journal.christianscience.com/shared/view/u39f1o52lk?s=e
This was written when Mary Baker Eddy was still here. I liked looking at it with that in mind.
Thank you for sharing CS, and all!
I love this part at the end of the article:
“The process of putting “off the old man with his deeds,” and putting “on the new man,” should not be a discouraging one, and is not, as we recognize this false claim of a dual nature for what it is, and work patiently and persistently in correcting false beliefs about ourselves, knowing that a lack of thoroughness in doing this work only delays the solution of the problem, and is as fatal to right results as a refusal to correct errors in a mathematical problem would be. What we need to strive for is spiritual understanding, because this corrects errors naturally, and as it is gained we “emerge gently from matter into Spirit” (Science and Health, p. 485). Thus our efforts, instead of being the strife and conflict of the human will against erroneous conditions, become the natural activity of this divine understanding. We need, however, to be patient with others and ourselves in this process of solving life’s great problem, — not patient with errors but patient with the seemingly slow progress in acquiring this understanding, and full of faith in its triumph, knowing our brother’s problem is solved by him naturally only as he measures up to his own understanding and not up to ours.” ❤️
This post clarifies a few things that I didn’t even realize needed clarifying …..until I read what you have to say today Even. Thank you again!
“You can’t hit a moving target,” a practitioner once said. If we are continually advancing and being active spiritually in our work and world, no opinion of someone else can get a fix on us. We aren’t the same individual whom they had an opinion about yesterday as we are an unfolding idea.
I was trying to help my parents the past year and felt like I was living their lives helping them make decisions about moving, finances, caregivers. I realized recently it was much better to just stand back and affirm God’s government of their affairs and not have opinions. It lifted a huge burden just to know that God is governing and I don’t have to help manage every detail. My mom just moved into a fantastic cottage with everything she could want and has made new friends already.
Your awareness of having a huge burden lifted opened my eyes, to doing the same for my children who are recently launched. I applaud you and feel benefited by your sharing about leaving your opinions to God’s government; REALLY affirming God’s government of their affairs! Then watch God’s unfoldment of GOOD!
All of these shared contributions are marvelous as specific ideas hovering around opinion. I really relate to Linda’s confession about trying to manage her parents’ affairs, as I used to be prone to interfering (“helping”) everyone & anyone who seemed to be uncertain or in need of “fixing” I think you all know about such a misguided mindset ! What a relief to allow Mind to direct them, to know that God’s Law is at work for everyone, & in every situation! I don’t have to be The Fixer!!! Haha! I am free to work on me, as it is only my thinking which needs fixing at times. I rejoice in the magnificent Good unfolding !
Love
I am having to admit that I have a strong opinion right now, seeing my family as super fixers who I think are not respecting my opinions and competence. And my holding negative complaining thoughts about the situation. Thinking I have to fight for a good opinion from them. They are trying to help as they see is necessary. This message makes me see I need to look at this from a completely different angle, to start with the only true opinion TRUTH. The blog a few times ago about not being young or old was a great help.
I really appreciate the articles and comments you fellow bloggers share. Thank you Evan and all. Sending much Love.
Evan I keyed in on two things you said today. 1) “What is the truth that needs to be known?” and 2) the fact that our own opinion is no more important (or true) than anyone else’s. These two ideas can help cut through much confusion. We can get quiet and listen for God to tell us what is really going on in any situation and what needs to be seen and known. Then humility takes over and I see that neither “I” nor another knows anything, if we are looking at things from a human/material viewpoint. God knows.
Getting quiet seems like the tricky part for me, error often tempts me to have an immediate opinion or analysis or narrative about “what’s going on”. But I can remember, “Peace, Be still,” and “Be still and know that I am God.” Love to all.
Thank you all and Evan! So many….and too many ..opinions about and on the medical and political on the news, etc. So grateful for all the truths we have in C. S. to hold to. One that comes to me now is in S. and H…”Hold Thought steadfastly to the enduring, the good, and the true, and you will bring these into your experience proportionately to their occupancy of your thoughts.”
Today’s Daily Lift is a good one. Facing Down Age and Decline.”
Thank you Evan for this timely subject. Just mere human opinion is valueless and humbling to know that your opinion is no more important than another’s.
Rose thank you, What’s the truth that needs to be know?
Also thank you Angie and CS I printed those out for more study.
Such a wonderful spiritual breakfast, thank you all.
My mom would say about this – “Vereeeeeee good!!! Thank you.
Dear Evan, I am endless grateful for this for me very comforting and helpful SpiritView! During this special time I hear so many different mortal opinions what shall be done best. It is most helpful to side with God and pray and study our weekly lesson sermon. I commented this so often, but it is really very effective and healing.
Am thankful for the inspiring comments here ♡
THE HEALING ENVIRONMENT OF SOUL
Alan A. Aylwin April 1979 issue of The Christian Science Journal
The Psalmist must have been hungry for Truth, craving the healing peace and harmony of Soul’s presence, when he wrote, “My soul longeth, yea, even fainteth for the courts of the Lord: my heart and my flesh crieth out for the living God.”
Many of us have felt the same way. And then what a blessing it is to realize that in absolute reality God, the Soul of man, is the real environment in which we live! Christian Science teaches us that you and I are infinite Soul’s own conscious ideas, His spiritually mental activity within Himself. With healing directness Mrs. Eddy writes, “Soul is the substance, Life, and intelligence of man, which is individualized, but not in matter.” (Science and Health, p. 477;↑)
God, infinite Soul, is always joyous and at peace. Then, as His own Self-reflection, so are we! Soul is the vital stillness, centering all things, eternally satisfied and complete in the knowledge of its own Oneness and Allness. No disease-producing fear or tension can invade this perfectly ordered, eternally rested totality of good. Because God, Soul, fills all space, there is nothing external to Him, and nothing that exists within Him can be foreign to His perfect nature and character. You and I are Soul’s own conscious Self-awareness embraced in all-inclusive good.
These are the facts of Being revealed in Christian Science. How important to our spiritual growth that we pause frequently to prayerfully realize their meaning and claim their healing potency! Mrs. Eddy tells us, “Soul has infinite resources with which to bless mankind, and happiness would be more readily attained and would be more secure in our keeping, if sought in Soul.” And we will enjoy not only happiness but health and well-being–as many statements in her writings clearly indicate.
There is an inherent dynamism in the Science of Soul that reveals itself in tireless, unpressured activity and increased mental capacity. Christ Jesus was vividly aware that God, Soul, was the All of his being, and he found refreshment through the constant contemplation of this fact. Soul-reflected qualities such as peace, joy, meekness, purity, were the Bread of Life that kept him well and strong and enabled him to heal and uplift others.
In the Bible, in the book of I Kings, we find the familiar story of how the one infinite Soul revealed the stillness and beauty of His nature to the prophet Elijah. It was shown to Elijah that God was not in the wind, earthquake, or fire. He learned that the presence of Soul was not to be realized in the clamor of material turbulence, in the noise and dissonance of storm-tossed thinking. But in the tranquillity of spiritual knowing, Soul’s presence and power became clearly discernible. “A still small voice” spoke to him, and he listened and obeyed.
How greatly we need to cultivate the stillness that attunes thought to the healing peace and harmony of the divine nature! We need to see clearly that we are at rest in Soul-—”hid with Christ in God.” Our natural defense against all phases of evil is based on this full and omnipresent fact. Losing sight of this, we seem to get caught up in the senseless dance of uncontrolled thought, in the frenetic action of suppositional mortal mind that underlies much sickness. We are robbed of the inner quietude, the restorative vision of reality, that only an understanding of Soul can impart. Mrs. Eddy puts it simply: “Spirit, God, is heard when the senses are silent.”
It is always our innate consciousness of our oneness, or unity, with Soul that heals-— never a supposed struggle to make ourselves heard by Him in an attempt to bend the divine will. It should be obvious that turbulent, self-willed thought cannot possibly perceive the scientific unity of God and man.
Like all material conditions, the problem called physical disease is really a mental phenomenon. It is a picture of disturbed mortal thought produced by fear, ignorant belief, or one of the many forms of sin. These enemies of health and happiness have their base in the supposition that there are as many personal souls or minds as there are human beings, and that these produce a haphazard conglomeration of good and evil impressions. This supposition has no foundation in fact and is never a conscious living presence.
But actually Soul is the only Mind of man, and the understanding of this purges the so-called human mind of its disease-producing discord, so freeing the body from ill effects. We must consciously reject the belief in a sinful soul or mind, deny its so-called influence, and then quietly, gratefully, recognize the one real Soul, the great I AM, to be the only power and cause.
Right at this moment infinite Soul is the substance of our being, the healing presence embracing us, the source of every true thought and act. Realizing this and rejoicing in it, we prove true the biblical promise, “Because thou hast made the Lord, which is my refuge, even the Most High, thy habitation; there shall no evil befall thee, neither shall any plague come nigh thy dwelling.”
Barbara, I love this article! Thank you for taking the time to post it here. These truths uplifted my thought and I am grateful.
…I love it as you do, Rose. S&H 210:11-16 confirms the fact that Soul and its attributes
are forever manifested through man. All faculties are attributable to Soul, the One Ego.
How wonderful