The Dawn
by Jim Chapman
There is a point in one’s
spiritual evolution when thought rules out the possibility of God having
anything whatever to do with suffering experienced by humans. Such a view obsoletes old explanations for
evil and challenges reasoning to produce a new one. It is as if, finding a new larger sense of
God, we now are entitled to a new smaller sense of evil. Our progressively appearing spiritual sense
of God is accompanied by the progressive disappearance of beliefs in evil.
When the
leading edge of our thought evolves from the belief in God as a divine
personality to the understanding of God as supreme spiritual Principle, the
idea of God being conscious of actual evil becomes impossible. This is the point at which religious thought
becomes Science, being based not on personality but on Principle. Understanding God as Principle, Love makes
error unthinkable; but until our thinking completely transforms our human
beliefs, we will continue to experience a human world wherein degrees of
suffering may be apparent.
Even
having accepted the allness and goodness of God, Spirit as the basis for all
legitimate thinking, unredeemed material and human belief will still present a
remnant sense of discord and limitation to be overcome. Sensing this, we naturally want to answer the
question, where did evil come from and what is its nature, if only to help us
be rid of it. At this level of belief,
there are two practical answers to this, one correct and one incorrect, albeit
useful.
The first
answer is that correct thinking, healing thinking, does not need to answer the
question because there is, in spiritual fact, no human suffering and no error
of belief. No other answer is correct as
a basis for prayerful thinking. On the
other hand, if this doesn’t do it, vigorous Christian Science practice has
nothing to do with dreamy absolutism that is shallowly oblivious to human
needs. When we grow beyond the belief in
God as a divine personality, our theology advances from the voluntary belief in
a personal origin for evil to the involuntary belief in an impersonal and
mythical origin of belief apart from God.
The literal acceptance of the story of Adam and Eve in the Bible
illustrates theology compatible with God as a divine personality. When we accept the idea of God as supreme
spiritual Principle, this story evolves from being literal to being
metaphorical, the significance of the story, from material to metaphysical.
The theory of the
fall, either personal or impersonal, results from an attempted explanation for
a human sense of fear. The innocent
human looks about him, sees an imperfect world, mistakenly thinks the
imperfection is real, concludes that something went amiss, and then becomes
afraid.
Mary Baker Eddy has
this thought-provoking statement about fear: "Fear is a belief of
sensation in matter."2 If fear is a belief of
sensation in matter, perhaps its antidote is related to an understanding of
sensation in Spirit. The individual who knows
that all his sensations are spiritual becomes deeply and fundamentally
unafraid. This one knows that to be
spiritually minded is to really live, to feel all of Life's feelings and to
know all of Life's joys.
The individual who is thus unafraid
knows that even in terms of human belief, there has never been an original
"fall" event of any sort.
Mary
Baker Eddy has used four adjectives as part of the definition of
God she provides in the Christian Science textbook. They are: "God is incorporeal, divine,
supreme, infinite ..."3 These adjectives, and their
sequential order, form the structure for the process of reasoning used in this
article. The first adjective,
incorporeal, tells us that our inquiry into causation should consider mental
factors. Since both Creator and creation
are mental in nature, they can only be understood metaphysically. The next adjective leads us to consider the
fact that not only is God's creation mental, it is divinely mental. It is wholly good.
Next,
we consider that looking to Spirit for all our sensations reveals to human
belief Spirit's supremacy. Spirit is, to
the highest type of human belief, as well as in divine Science, the only
essential mental substance. It is all
powerful, the only reality, and can never be displaced or pushed back. From this vantage point, we see that there
could never have been a beginning to mental discord, even as a false
supposing. However, in order to
understand and demonstrate this spiritual truth at the level of human belief,
we will need embrace our improved beliefs about the nature of human sense
itself.
As
humans, we haven't yet fully assimilated the idea of infinity. To some extent we still think of things as
beginning. For this reason, even our
human belief can understand the supremacy of Spirit when it is presented in
terms of what we have called the theory of the dawn. What if God began and is growing, or what if
God and spiritual reality are complete, but are simply dawning gradually to
individual and collective human thought?
Such theories could explain everything apparent to human sense.
The appearance of any
ill could be viewed as the subjective appearance of some incomplete recognition
or expression by humans of the truth of being.
A false sense, earlier attributed to the suppositional beginning of
error, is seen to be simply a limited sense of Spirit. Now human belief can see that all is Spirit
and spiritual, present awareness is seen to be spiritual sense, and what might
be called matter loses preponderance in our sense of reality.
However, we cannot
escape the absolute Truth, as revealed in Christian Science, that acknowledges
nothing less than the totality of infinite spiritual goodness as man's present
experience. In Christian Science practice this truth is brought to bear on
human belief, and through the action of the Christ, human beliefs are
improved. But we need to love the Christ
enough to appreciate improved beliefs about the human scene when they
appear. This statement is more
significant than it appears on the surface.
Our
understanding of God's divinity, His sublimity and goodness, releases us from
believing that the divine Principle had any complicity in human discord. Our understanding of God's supremacy rules
out any belief in a "fall" or false supposing. The next higher human belief about the nature
of human sense is presented by the theory of the dawn, a limited human
belief. The important point is that this
limited belief of the dawn, when embraced in thought, displaces and removes
from human thought any belief in a fall or even suppositional beginning to
error. The good this realization brings
to human thought cannot be easily over-estimated. Even though not true in divine Science,
limitation is a better belief than discord in most situations.
Once having embraced
the theory of the dawn and the improved human view that comes with it, we need
to acknowledge the infinite nature of God, the last of the four
adjectives. The theory of the dawn is
not correct in light of spiritually scientific reasoning. Yet for anyone walking on this planet, the
dawn is a better belief than to consider material sense the offspring of an
original false supposing, that appears in Eddy’s writings. The dawn belief does away with the latent
fear and superstition inherent in any acceptance of an original misdeed or
false supposing. The theory of the dawn
actually allows human belief to accept and comprehend the fact that spiritual
goodness is the only mental reality and substance, and it has no opposite. Is this not the mental state Mary Baker Eddy
refers to in her definition of the river Euphrates, the fourth and final mental
river to be crossed on the way out of the Adam dream? In this definition, Mrs. Eddy refers to a
state of mortal belief, the only error of which is limitation.4
This highest state of
human belief has not yet completely understood the infinite nature of the
divine Mind, the conscious reflection of which constitutes man's true and natural
being. If we view human problems as
stemming from a discordant mental presence, a so-called “mortal mind,” our
belief is rooted in the "fall" or the "false supposing"
theory. If we view a problem as simply
inadequate spiritual expression, ours is a belief in "the dawn". Both beliefs need healing, but the dawn is
much less frightening, because, get this, incumbent in the false supposing
theory is the allowance for it happening again.
I know of
a small boy asked by his parents to go out at night to retrieve a cherished toy
left out after play. The little boy
didn't want to go. He protested,
"But it's dark out there."
When his parents tried to assure him that he'd be safe, he explained
with great feeling, "But, the dark will get all over me."
To an
adult, the child's view may be amusing.
And yet doesn't it illustrate exactly the viewpoint we may have accepted
when seeing any discordant condition or false belief as something, rather than
as nothing. The little boy did not yet
understand that what appeared to his sense as light and darkness, were not two
opposite substances, but rather that light was the presence of illuminating
energy and darkness was its absence - simply the want of light.
In the
practice of Christian Science healing, when the mental aspect of a problem
confronts us as something, or even as an "unreal false belief",
getting rid of it brings healing. But
when a problem appears to us as unreal from the outset, as intrusive shadow,
our declaring its nothingness only confirms what it seems to be. The opponent which is but a shadow can only
be vanquished by turning on lights.
The Christian
Scientist who is turning on lights, so to speak, has come to be the
conscious presence of the truths God gives to man. Then healing is the result of being. It naturally unfolds from man being the image
and likeness of God.
Any error
being simply the want of conscious Truth, it becomes plain to human belief
that the most awful evil we could ever imagine is, at the level of its mental
essence, actually nothing, vacuity. Any
such appearance on the human scene can be seen as just a mental shadow waiting
to be filled with the light of Truth.
This healing dawn of Truth is inevitable in belief, and its infinite
brightness is already here, in Science.
We
can be grateful to God for the comfort that comes from improved beliefs, for
they are the blessings of the Christ.
Christian Science demonstration, however, does not reliably result from
application of even the highest human beliefs.
To know as the divine Mind knows, we must think from the standpoint of
the present infinitude of God and His reflection man. We may find wonderful improvements, but we can
never find permanent rest in even the highest human sense. It is only the individual rejoicing in an
infinite spiritual sense of existence who is truly at home and in heaven.
As
Christian Science healers, we should rejoice in our infinite spiritual sense
that the good we desire for ourselves and mankind is present here and now. The healing standpoint is that everything is
already alright.
By
shining this light of spiritual knowing, and by accepting that it has always
been shining, we can see it revealed to human sense in blessings. To base our human beliefs on the theory of
the dawn is human progress. But to stop
there, is to lapse from Christian Science into mere positive thinking, buoyant
though it may be. Christ Jesus did not
recommend to his disciples even the most positive ways of human thinking. He wanted them to be infinitely minded, as
was his Father. He taught them,
"Say not ye, There are yet four months, and then
cometh the harvest? behold, I say unto
you, Lift up your eyes, and
look on the fields; for they are white already to harvest."5
Divine Science has
revealed man's present coexistence with self-conscious divine Love to be the
timeless Truth of his being. The joyful
appreciation and exercise of this understanding is to work out the problem of
being in Christian Science.
(1) Genesis 2:6-3:24
(2) Misc. Writings 93:18-19
(3) S&H 465:9 only
(4) S&H 585:21
(5) John 4:35
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