Reading the supposed conversations between God and Satan in Job this week reminded me of a portion of last week’s lesson from page 243 of Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, by Mary Baker Eddy. This eliminates any possibility of such a conversation:

Truth has no consciousness of error. Love has no sense of hatred. Life has no partnership with death. Truth, Life, and Love are a law of annihilation to everything unlike themselves, because they declare nothing except God.

Then the following from page 79 of Retrospection and Introspection, by Mary Baker Eddy:

The signs for the wayfarer in divine Science lie in meekness, in unselfish motives and acts, in shuffling off scholastic rhetoric, in ridding the thought of effete doctrines, in the purification of the affections and desires.

With “scholastic rhetoric” the human mind seeks to educate us with “The power of persuasion or attraction; that which allures or charms.” (1828 Webster’s) It saw what happened to Job and attempted to humanly figure out what caused it. All that does is make people think, “What awful things God allowed to happen!”

From page 256 of Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, by Mary Baker Eddy:

Progress takes off human shackles. The finite must yield to the infinite. Advancing to a higher plane of action, thought rises from the material sense to the spiritual, from the scholastic to the inspirational, and from the mortal to the immortal.

I am so grateful for Christian Science and this Church for providing the means to rid “the thought of effete doctrines,” those teachings of the human mind that are “barren” and “worn out with age.” (1828 Webster’s) With Christian Science I can see in this story that God did not conspire against Job. Whether it was Job’s fears that brought on these things, or the malpractice of others, or whatever, I am certain that it was God alone that could make things right.

When his disciples asked why the man was born blind, Jesus didn’t look for who or what to blame since he knew as Mrs. Eddy did that “The basic error is mortal mind.” (S&H, p. 405) Christ Jesus’ answer to why this occurred was, “that the works of God should be made manifest in him.” (John 9:3)

I am so grateful for these lessons each week, because even when we have had Bible stories before, I always get something new from them that helps me and comforts me. Thank you very much!