A higher love

No one was stopping to help the man. The student wanted to stop, but he was headed for the last exam of his last year in seminary – a final he had to pass in order to accept a badly needed job. The professor had warned that latecomers would be locked out. If the seminarian stopped to help the man gasping on the sidewalk, he would almost certainly be late. Surely someone else would step up.

No one did. The seminarian’s heart couldn’t just leave the man there. He stopped.

The man wasn’t really struggling; he had been planted. The professor had set the same dilemma for every student in the class. Those who stopped to help got an automatic “A” on the exam. Those who didn’t had to take the test.

As the minister who told this story explained, the professor wanted to see if the future ministers understood Christianity’s very foundation – a love for God and our fellow man so pure and unselfish that it mirrors God’s love for us.

The ancient Greeks had a word they frequently used for that kind of love: “agapē.” The King James Version of the Bible sometimes translates “agapē” as “charity,” calling to mind that wholly unselfish, broader love that is more than the personal love someone might have for a family member or a friend.

One example is First Corinthians 13:3: “Though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing.” Really? What does it matter if we don’t have “agapē”?

To the Christian Scientist, it matters very much. The love that makes a difference in the world is based on God as divine Love. It is the very power that heals. Mary Baker Eddy, the discoverer of Christian Science, explains, “The physician who lacks sympathy for his fellow-being is deficient in human affection, and we have the apostolic warrant for asking: ‘He that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?’ Not having this spiritual affection, the physician lacks faith in the divine Mind and has not that recognition of infinite Love which alone confers the healing power” (“Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures,” p. 366).

Spiritual affection is tied to the “recognition of infinite Love.” When we truly recognize infinite God, Love, we see Him as the only creator, the only power, the only intelligence, filling all space. As God’s creation, man, we are each the spiritual image and likeness of Love. When we recognize Love as wholly good, we can’t help but also recognize man as wholly good because man reflects Love.

Thus, spiritual affection is not just a feeling of love for God and man. It is the recognition of the infinite range and agency of divine Love and the resulting boundlessness and dominion of man. If perfect Love and its perfect and spiritual reflection fill all space, there can be no room for anything not recognizable as Love.

This is why the recognition of Love’s all-presence and all-power confers healing power. In our experience we see lots of things that don’t look like Love – sin, disease, death, conflict. The conscious recognition of Love’s eternal presence and power excludes evil from our experience, because it has already been excluded from Love’s kingdom. Disease, financial struggles, relationship problems, proportionately disappear as we understandingly recognize Love for what it is.

This is also why, as St. Paul tells us, without love even our best actions fall short. Without love, we lose sight of the true view of God, of our fellow man, of ourselves. When we lose the true view, subtle suggestions can cause us to act based on views that see a power or many powers competing with Love.

But through Christ, the spiritual idea of divine Love, we recognize these suggestions for the falsehoods they are. When we allow divine Love into our consciousness, Christ keeps the ideal of Life, Truth, and Love bright and foremost in our thought.

This ideal is a touchstone which shows if we’re acting from a standpoint of spiritual affection or of mere human affection. Spiritual affection recognizes no limits to Love’s reach or power, knows that no harm can come to us from acting in accordance with Love’s demand that we love our fellow man.

We can set our sights on that spiritual affection, that higher sense of love that Christ Jesus embodied. We can let Christ, the spiritual idea of divine Love, teach us through Christian Science how to recognize what belongs to divine Love. We can trust that when we love unselfishly and act from that basis, our feet will be set on the path laid by Love. And we can expect the natural result to be healing.

Adapted from an editorial published in the February 2024 issue of The Christian Science Journal.