Reply To: Wrestle until victory won over error/sin/human self

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Reply To: Wrestle until victory won over error/sin/human self

The Bulletin Board is for gratitude for Christian Science and the Church, as well as timely excerpts from the Bible, the works of Mrs. Eddy, and the early workers that help and encourage. We are very grateful for all posts that conform to these guidelines, but will edit or remove anything that the Practitioners feel is not in complete accord with pure Christian Science or in any way disrespectful of it.

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October 28, 2022 at 4:28 pm #15663

JPalmer

Participant

Thank you very much for this post!

While praying about how to identify self-love this week, I remembered early in my time here how my practitioner defined animal magnetism as a belief in a self apart from God. Using that as a starting point, I see that self-love is actually loving that false belief we could even be a self apart from God. It becomes what is tempted by the serpent’s words in Genesis 3 : 5 — “For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.”

This puts Matthew 6 : 21 in a new perspective for me — “For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” If what we truly treasure is oneness with God, then we will, as quoted above, “wrestle all day, all night, until the light comes and the victory is won” when we find any sinful thought within. If what we treasure is that self apart from God, then we will excuse and condone sin, and should expect sickness soon after and death eventually. How we deal with sin seems to point back to how much self-love we have.

This makes me so grateful for all that is done here to teach pure Christian Science, and to help each of us become “a terror to error” as Gilbert Carpenter says in Watching Point 496 of 500 Watching Points.

Thank you very much for this lesson!