If you’d like to live happier and healthier, it’s wise to strip sin of any claim to power over your thoughts and actions.
This might seem like a tall order to fill, for the temptation to sin seems rife in the humane experience, even endemic to the human mind.
However, we are not helpless mortals. We are children of God with spiritual sense to hear God’s direction and follow through with moral and spiritual decisions that bring about good results.
Sin is not a power that can rule our thought and make us act wrongly. A temptation to be dishonest cannot force us to be dishonest. A temptation to overeat cannot force us to overeat. We can turn from sin and act rightly.
Sin claims power and persuasion, but in truth, it has none. It is powerless to turn right thinking into wrong action.
Side with what’s right and walk away from sin. It is not the ruler of your life.
Sin has no power over you, for all power belongs to God.
Thank you Evan. I reread this article recently and it fits in with Evan’s message today about sin (suggestions) having no power over us, so it occurred to me to share it.
Wouldn’t it have been easier just to push him?
https://journal.christianscience.com/shared/view/qzynvh2upw?s
Great article, thanks for sharing.
Insiteful and spot on article. Thank you for sharing!
Thank you, Evan for keeping us alert. And thank you RH for sharing
the Mark Swinney article – it is so good and does correspond very well
with Evan’ topic today.
When I first came into Christian Science I didn’t understand what
sin included, and my eyes were opened. I began to see that it is
sinful to believe in anything that is unlike God, Spirit – anything at
all that is material. I am still learning more about what sin claims
to be, and how we can recognise its subtle suggestions which can
come to us when we are not paying attention to the Truth. We
really need to protect our thoughts prayerfully and keep our
thoughts in line with the spiritual facts. Sin’s claims can
be really subtle, and appear to be our own thoughts – but
Christian Science teaches us that our only real thoughts come to us
from God, and are all harmonious and good, because God, good,
is the only Mind, and we are Mind’s spiritual expression. We cannot
be tempted when keeping out mind filled with Truth and Love..
Mark Swinney’s article is a keeper.
Evan,
What you have written for today, along with Maggie’s comments and the reference to Mark Swinney’s article (which I revisited) are a great help and guide to me.
Thank you from my heart.
Thank you,RH, the article by Mark Swinney is excellent and thank you, Evan for this wonderful insight. Mary Baker Eddy’s statement that we give error the only life it has (rephrased) is profound. Thinking about that, I realized that as false suggestions come into thought, we can instantly reject them as exactly what they are (FALSE suggestion) and refuse to be duped by world opinion and material theories about life. We can refuse to give sin (in any guise) any power over our own thought. It’s not a hard thing to do but it takes alertness to not get drawn into temptation. Jesus was wide awake. So too, we must be! Onward, friends!
One of my favorite truths in Christian Science is “know then you possess sovereign power to think and act rightly and nothing can dispossess you of this power and trespass on Love.” I was a young woman and had joined friends in Hawaii for the first time. After a few days a deception and something that wasn’t right came to light. I left where I was staying and got a motel room on my own. I called a practitioner friend in tears because I wondered if I was being selfish and judgmental, She told me she was very proud of me and told me to hold to the above statement, I went on to have a happy time while there and even had the opportunity to share Christian Science with someone I met who was in need. To this day, that powerful truth is so supportive and meaningful to me!
I don’t know if anyone will see this now; but I wanted to correct and cite the quote I shared. I was rushing off to work and did it from memory and didn’t have time then to look it up. This amazing statement is from Pulpit and Press 3:7. I should have recalled one very special word “heritage” – how wonderful that this dominion is our birthright, our inheritance! Mrs.Eddy writes: “Know, then, that you possess sovereign power to think and act rightly, and that nothing can dispossess you of this heritage and trespass on Love.”
It is clear that we have to walk with God, think with Mind, love with Love , stick with the Truth, turn from sense to Soul, claim being as Spirit and cling to the Principal of Life,…always going hand in hand with God.
Thank you Evan, and thanks for the link to Mark Swinneys article RH. There’s always more to be revealed of our birthright.❣️
Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on thee, because he trusteth in thee. Isaiah 26.v 3
if you want true joy in your life, welcome in the spirit and freedom from temptation. Temptation is the path to sorrow and fear, guilt and remorse, crying and despair. While the resistance to these experiences frees us to experience the joys and triumphs of the Spirit of our true identity. It actually is a choice to express freedom or crawl on the path mortality until we finally release that path for our true selves.
Oh my! Here is another extraordinarily rich feast for our morning meal… and n the past, I have run from conversation or discussion about sin, primarily because it made me so uncomfortable, since I left old theology behind & am learning in Christian science that sin is nothing except the idea that we are separate from God. But I made myself read today’s SpiritView very carefully, including Mark Swinney‘s article. And I made myself consider the idea that I have to be aware that “temptation“ does occur in my life, but its mastery is my God-given dominion, my identity as God’s mirror image. All of today’s ideas have been so helpful to me , and I intend to dwell on the many lovely, supportive messages as I go through my day.
thank you Evan, RH, Grace, Sharon, Barbara UK- so far! I’m sure there will more later to thank!
Love to you all
Annie, I too have had confusion and mixed feelings about the word “sin.” It’s one of those words that can carry with it much misunderstanding, misinformation and baggage, including guilt and condemnation of self and others, and the sense that we or others can be inherently “bad” or “sinners.” Christian Science removes all that and makes it clean and simple, and defines sin as believing in the truth or power or reality of anything unlike God, good. I have also heard it defined as “missing the mark.”
Evan, so good to be reminded that temptations will come to all of us about all sorts of things, but we can know that we are ultimately immune to it. as you said for example, a temptation to be dishonest cannot MAKE us behave dishonestly. Temptations are suggestions of error, we are not required to take the bait.
But I can’t reject the bait with human willpower or any mortal or mental struggle, I need to rely on God and His power and Love to help me. In S&H it says we can, “RISE in the strength of Spirit to resist all that is unlike good. God has made man capable of this, and nothing can vitiate (weaken, diminish) the ability and power divinely bestowed on man.” (p. 393).
The thought has come to me that we have to be very careful not to look for errors within
ourselves.. That could be like
reading a medical dictionary and imagining we have the symptoms described. Mrs. Eddy
tells us that Truth uncovers error in its own way, and we just need to do the best we can
in expressing love and goodness to one another, following Jesus’ example, praying for
ourselves and others that we be not led into temptation, according to the Lord’s Prayer =
acknowledging all the good around us, and giving thanks.
Thanks everyone for your comments. Maggie’s second comment today reminded me of another article I really like. You can read it below. I used to think Christian Scientists had to “search” for error in order to discover erroneous suggestions being accepted that needed to be corrected. But after reading this article years ago, I now relax and just focus on truth and that focus on truth reveals suggestions that I have been accepting that are inconsistent with truth. Once those suggestions “come to light”, it’s easier to reject them because I know they are not God created. It’s like the difference between groping for trash in a room in the dark versus easily finding and removing the trash once the room is illuminated with light.
“Let Truth uncover error”
https://sentinel.christianscience.com/shared/view/a2zltp97b6?s=e
Here’s a version of this article in German for Uta. Hi Uta! 🙂
Lass Wahrheit den Irrtum aufdecken
https://de.herald.christianscience.com/shared/view/2j2m1qjsldc?s=e
Thanks a lot RH, that’s a wonderful and clear artcle!-♡
Thank you Evan. Great comments from everyone, and thank you for the wonderful article RH.
Some quotes by others:
– “It’s not always easy to keep up this altitude of thought. Persistence is necessary. From the very moment you open your eyes in the morning, you can claim your oneness with Spirit and keep on doing it throughout the day. This will begin to annul the feeling that the material world has power and can make a victim of you. Nothing can truly influence, attract, impel, or undermine you when you think from the basis of Spirit.” (Jill Gooding)
– “Why would I let the mortal picture of things determine or tell me who I am? – when the Father has already told me: daughter/son of the King, child of God, loved of Loved. Affirm that everything – the action of people and the development of events – is under the smooth, sure control of divine Mind.” (Diane Marrapodi)
– “Evil appears real to mortal sense only because the mortal sense of things is itself part of the deception.” (DeWitt John)
Thank you Evan and all. Sin, once identified, can be destroyed. Holding onto Truth helps in this identification as one can easily know that which God does not know and did not create. God did not create anything out of Himself., good.
I’m so grateful for everyone’s posts and the articles shared!!! For me, this acronym for sin has been helpful through the years: “separate i now.” CS teaches me there is just one real Ego or I, and MANY unique, individual manifestations of this one I. Counterfeits to this one “I THAT I am” are but deceitful suggestions that there exists many independent individualities with separate mortal minds that can think or act contrary to the one Mind. The symbol for 1 in Roman numerals is the same as the capital I we use in English to refer to ourself, that God used to refer to God’s Self when speaking to Moses.
In Science there really isn’t a sparate i, a mortal i, for not one of us is truly other than God’s unique reflection. For me this Truth always enables us to demonstrate what our Leader tells us to do: “Know, then, that you possess sovereign power to think and act rightly, and that nothing can dispossess you of this heritage and trespass on Love.” Pul 3:7-9.
Hi dear RH, I just noticed you sent me the article by Paul Stark Seeley in German. That is very nice of you, thank you very much! And I am sure that I am not the only German SpiritView friend, enjoying this blessing Blog of Evan. You know, I am also enjoying reading the English version, because some passages are more inspiring to me when reading them in English. That is specially the case with the hymns in the original English setting which are more inspiring than the German translations. I do love the texts in English much more as they have a clearer metaphysics! The English language is my great interest.
Thank you dear Evan for today’s SpiritView which is as inspiring and helpful as always. I am grateful for the absolute Truth of your last sentence, that sin has no power over us, as all power belongs to our Father-Mother God who loves and guides us – wonderfully powerful!
Thanks a lot to all as well!
Hello Uta,
When I see that some of our hymns are also in German I like to sing them in Deutch!!
yes, in our German hymnal book all Englisch hymns from no. 1 to 4oo and some more are all translaied into German, and I like to sing them too in German as I like the memodies.
Carmel, do you also speak German?
Oh, Virginia is your precious name. I hope you don`t think I do not like our German translations – not true. But the o r i g i n a l settings are very often more metaphysical. The difficulties were that the verses must be in thymes and therefore some verses lost a bit of the original inspiration. I hope this is understood and me is forgiven! Thanks!
Such a feast of wonderful ideas today, thank you Evan and all who have contributed their thoughts and ideas to this important discussion.