Let Christ establish your day

The apostle Paul, urging his listeners to challenge and overcome materialistic thinking through spiritual “warfare,” enjoins us to bring “into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ” (II Corinthians 10:5). He doesn’t say some thoughts, but every thought.

What does this mean? Why is being obedient to this guidance important, and how do we do so?

If we pay attention to what we’re thinking throughout the day, we find myriad thoughts coming to us. Some of these thoughts are good and helpful. Others are laden with fear, frustration, or anger. We can ask ourselves, “What is the origin of those thoughts?”

Just as Paul distinguishes between “the carnal mind” (Romans 8:7), which he condemns, and “the mind of Christ” (I Corinthians 2:16), which he understood to be supreme – “the power of God, and the wisdom of God” (I Corinthians 1:24) – so Christian Science teaches that the divine Mind, the Mind Christ Jesus expressed, is the real and only Mind, and that man, including everyone, is God’s spiritual reflection. It teaches that the carnal mind or mortal mind is a mistaken concept of God and man – the very opposite of the Mind that is God.

Since God is good, thoughts that are good are real, coming from God. Thoughts unlike good are unreal, invalid – and therefore powerless to affect us, provided we are alert to them and guard our consciousness against their entry.

This process of watching our thought to determine what we let in is not a mere human technique. It is the activity of God’s love and our response to that love. This gets to the very heart of what Christ is – the true idea of God coming to human consciousness, evidencing God’s deep love for us.

Jesus in his parables and Paul in his treatises taught that it matters what we are accepting into our mental home. Paul describes spiritual warfare against “the works of the flesh” (including idolatry, hatred, strife, and envy). Then he lists contrasting, Godlike, qualities such as love, joy, gentleness, and so forth, stating, “against such there is no law” (Galatians 5:19-23). To me, this shows that engaging in spiritual warfare is a matter of invoking divine law.

In his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus explains how to pay attention to and discipline our thoughts. These teachings and Jesus’ accompanying healing works make clear that real causation is in God. To the degree that we bring our consciousness into conformity with the Mind that Christ Jesus claimed as his own, we repudiate mortal thoughts and beliefs and their outward effects, and thereby experience harmonious and healthful being.

Haven’t most of us found ourselves at one time or another carried along with the general drift of mortal thinking – believing ourselves to be at the mercy of material “laws” of health, accepting “natural” disasters as inevitable, taking offense at what others do or don’t do? Mary Baker Eddy, the discoverer of Christian Science, instructs us how to diligently guard the door of our consciousness to allow only thoughts that originate in God to enter.

Calvin Hill, a member of Mrs. Eddy’s household, recalls her saying to him, in substance, “The first thing I do in the morning when I awake is to declare I shall have no other mind before divine Mind, and become fully conscious of this, and adhere to it throughout the entire day; then the evil cannot touch me” (“We Knew Mary Baker Eddy”: Expanded Edition, Vol. 1, p. 353).

As we do this consistently each morning and throughout the day, we establish our day (God’s day) in consciousness before getting drawn into mortal mind’s thoughts, beliefs, and depiction of events. This is not the activity of two contending powers. Rather, it’s the omnipotence of divine Love demonstrating the powerlessness, the unreality, of evil and the omnipresence, the reality, of good.

Even if we awaken in the morning with negative thoughts and fears, which are certainly not from God, we can practice Mrs. Eddy’s own spiritual discipline as described above. We can effectively reject those counterfeit, ungodlike thoughts, and admit the counter facts from God in obedience to Christ.

To the degree that we uplift the Christ in our consciousness, we will express to others the Christly love that includes all humanity in its embrace, and they, too, will be drawn to Christ – to the healing consciousness of supreme good.

Adapted from an editorial published in the Nov. 27, 2023, issue of the Christian Science Sentinel.