Not afraid but not naive

I’ve been hearing the same voices many others in society have been listening to – media, government officials, friends. And the focus is pretty constantly the same: coronavirus. A lot of people have learned a new word, and too many of them are afraid of it.

But recently a little phrase has been surfacing in my thought. It’s this: Christ is voicing good, right within consciousness. What an incredible contrast to all the bad stuff I was taking in. It’s clear to me that the source of that more hopeful thought is Mary Baker Eddy’s “Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures,” where she writes, “Christ is the true idea voicing good, the divine message from God to men speaking to the human consciousness” (p. 332).

Now these words weren’t telling me to ignore the difficult things going on in society. But they were assuring me that there was something more going on than all the discussion about contagion. The Christ is the Godlike nature of Jesus that he lived so fully and successfully in his human life. Jesus promised that this Christ always has existed and always will. It speaks to us of God’s goodness and all-power, and of man’s immortal, indestructible nature. And Jesus’ life proved that this “good” voiced by the Christ has a healing and calming influence in our lives. He gave evidence of this again and again as he came in contact with others.

Over a lifetime I’ve seen a wonderful consistency in what Jesus taught. I’ve seen evidence that the Christ can bring a spiritual poise that literally changes our experiences. Changes them in a way that may be unexplainable to the material senses, but is quite understandable to our more spiritual sense.

On a number of occasions, I’ve seen times when everyone expected contagion to take a particular course, and it didn’t work out that way at all. And I’ve experienced times when a kind of mental contagion was stopped in its tracks. Once when a doctor had set some bones after an accident, he explained a number of drugs I needed to take in order to protect myself from potential harm. He described one drug intended to deal with a condition that he said could be fatal. While I certainly wasn’t naive about his warning, my preference was to protect myself with what I had learned about the healing Christ over the years. But his warning remained a little like a contagion from his thought to my thought.

Not too many days later the very condition he had told me about developed. I did something I wasn’t accustomed to doing, and which wasn’t helpful. I looked up the condition in a medical publication. Sure enough, the word “fatal” was prominent in the description. At first, fear tried to take over. But I began to discern the Christ I had come to trust “voicing good,” and soon I felt a spiritual peace and confidence. And within a few days the condition disappeared as I prayed specifically about it.

This voicing of good is a promise to every individual on this planet. In fact, Science and Health also affirms that the Christ is “a divine influence ever present in human consciousness” (p. xi). No one is without access to this healing influence. As we open our hearts to its messages, we recognize that it’s the true and only influence, bringing a calm that changes the course of human discord.

You don’t need to know a lot about the Christ to open your thought to its divine presence and discern the good it is voicing. In fact, when surrounding voices are making their views too prominent in your consciousness, take a moment and acknowledge that Christ is voicing good, and listen for its message right within your mind, assuring you of your safety in God.