You wanna bet?
The other day my husband and I were doggedly debating which type of container some mushroom soup had come in. I was convinced the container was paper, and he thought it was plastic. One of us blurted out, “You wanna bet?!” and we both marched into the kitchen to check the recycle bin. (It was plastic.)
It was a lighthearted, innocent exchange. But it got me thinking more deeply about betting that’s not so benign – betting that can become habit forming or evolve into gambling. This has recently increased in the United States in many sectors, such as sports betting or state lotteries.
With both betting and gambling, luck and chance are heavily involved. And anytime we subscribe to chance hoping for good outcomes, we are opening ourselves up to the associated assumption that there can be bad outcomes.
Christian Science offers a radically different approach to thinking and living than being beneficiaries or victims of luck: one that acknowledges the divine order of God, who is all good. Instead of chance, we can ground our lives on the divine Principle of all existence. This unswerving divine Principle, another term for God, is the source and substance of all creation.
We can count on the Divine because God’s nature includes only the unfolding of good. Since there is no jeopardy of any kind in the divine nature, there is no jeopardy for any of us in our true, spiritual identity as God’s offspring, created in God’s image. Our lives reflect the divine order, which is one of stability, calm, grace, and well-being.
Christ Jesus demonstrated through his consistent healing work that probability, chance, or risk of any type is not part of the kingdom of heaven, which he informed us is “at hand” (Matthew 10:7). He also assured that his followers, too, could help others find health, overcome sin, and experience stability in their lives. Jesus was confident in this teaching; there was no chance it might not be true, as has been proved in the centuries since.
While it can often appear that life is mortal and subject to the good, the bad, and the ugly of everyday occurrences, the spiritual fact is that divine Principle, Mind, is constantly guiding and providing for us. Acknowledging this truth lifts us into a place of certainty – certainty of higher, more spiritual satisfaction and fulfillment. And we find that we are less prone to accidents and better equipped to overcome disturbances.
Mary Baker Eddy, the discoverer of Christian Science, writes in “Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures,” “Accidents are unknown to God, or immortal Mind, and we must leave the mortal basis of belief and unite with the one Mind, in order to change the notion of chance to the proper sense of God’s unerring direction and thus bring out harmony” (p. 424).
I experienced this “unerring direction” when I applied to be a foreign exchange student after high school. Applicants had no say in where they went or with whom they would live for a year. Whether I would be accepted into the program – and if I was, whether I would land in a family where I would feel at home – seemed a roll of the dice, so to speak.
Turning to God, I prayed to let the divine Mind govern my motive for applying and guide the application process. Through these prayers, I felt assured that there was no risk involved for anyone applying because we were all truly under the direction of divine Mind, which is entirely good. This helped lift any anxiety about the uncertainty of the situation. Whatever the outcome of my application, there would be opportunities to bless and be blessed.
As it turned out, I was accepted, and then placed with a family that could not have been a more perfect fit. The experience was one of the happiest and most enlightening of my life.
Every day we have the opportunity to prove that God, the divine Principle and Mind, is in control and providing exactly what we each need. With such a guarantee, we can realize that we’re not subject to the whims of chance and rejoice in God’s beneficent certainty.
