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Announcements › Forums › Probation After Death — April 25th, 2021 › Sin known?
Does anyone care to comment on the seeming contradiction between the statement that even if no one else knows, God knows your sins (mentioned at Sunday’s Roundtable), and Mrs. Eddy’s statement that the infinite knows no sin. I think the statement that God knows our sins is probably made in the Bible in many ways. I suspect that the law of God works in human experience as if he did know our sins. I am certainly convinced that every sin and error will be corrected, eliminated by the law of Truth and Love.
My understanding of this is, even though God does not know the specifics of our Adam-dream, He does know when we are not listening to our spiritual sense and acting as directed. That lapse in our right thinking must be more obvious to God than when a parent asks their child to clean their room only to come back and the child spent the time playing and making more of a mess. We don’t know exactly what the child was thinking or doing, but we do know it wasn’t what they were supposed to be doing. A blank look and lame excuse won’t change that fact. Since our entire reason for being is to be His expression and manifestation, any deviation must be readily apparent to our Father-Mother God. Thank God for His mercy, and for Christian Science to help us learn to be who and what we were made to be!
It helps me to think of always being “plugged in” to God. (To me, the visual of an electrical outlet helps!) God is always communicating to me His love and wisdom, but if not careful, if not watching my thinking, I could easily be “unplugged”, distracted, “unplugging” myself as if no one is looking, and choose to “do my own thing”… maybe take a little break….maybe even with a little footnote, “I’ll get good with God later.”
We always take ourselves away from God, even though so many believe that God forsakes us. This is where “praying without ceasing” comes in, which can be thought of as focusing on God (a joy!), knowing He is all good, and striving to see that anything other than good is NOT from God and therefore is an illusion to be corrected with right thinking which brings us always back to God: “Thou shalt have no other Gods before me”… “not my will but thine be done.”
And if people don’t know the good news? It’s why we are told to “preach the Gospel to every creature.” Hmm… am I doing that? Is it a sin if I’m not?
Bicknell Young, in his article “Oneness,” says it most clearly: “The divine Mind can recognize no evil to be punished or destroyed. The sunshine knows no fog. In like manner, God, good, knows no evil. The divine Mind destroys the belief in evil, by being utterly unconscious of it, not by knowing it, and then making it a reality. As a belief in evil is to be destroyed, the Mind that is the treatment, destroys the belief, by maintaining man and the universe in an eternal law of harmony …This revelation of God and man as one, is indeed sufficient for all things.”
Many thanks to our practitioner, who in last week’s Roundtable, directed us to revisit this wonderful article.
Just as last week’s subject of “atonement” is noted by Mrs. Eddy as “a hard problem in theology,” she comments on page 1 of Unity of Good about this subject: “Perhaps no doctrine of Christian Science rouses so much natural doubt and questioning as this, that God knows no such thing as sin.” (lines 1-3). Shortly thereafter she states, “Let us then reason together on this important subject, whose statement in Christian Science may justly be characterized as wonderful” (ibid, p. 1: 8-10). The first 7 pages of Unity of Good contain Mrs. Eddy’s answer to this question: “Does God know or behold sin, sickness, and death?”
When viewing the Bible as the story of man’s progressive understanding of God over thousands of years, the seeming contradictions on this point become more clear, in my view. One online source makes this assessment: “The Old Testament shows the wrath of God against sin (with glimpses of His grace); the New Testament shows the grace of God toward sinners (with glimpses of His wrath)” (GotQuestions.org Podcast). In her book, Getting Better Acquainted with Your Bible, Bernice Shotwell describes the Bible as “an expanding revelation” (p. 12). Similarly, Alice Orgain states in her analysis of picture #7 in Christ and Christmas, that the Bible is the “revelation of the ascending consciousness of individual man. . . ”. So, advancing from the law and the prophets of the Old Testatment/Covenant, to the life of Christ Jesus and his teachings in the New Testament/Covenant, to Mary Baker Eddy and Christian Science/divine Science, this progression in understanding over many generations has gradually lead mankind to “. . . the higher mission of the Christ-power to take away the sins of the world” (S & H, p. 150).
As found in the December 2020 issue of Plainfield’s magazine, “Love is the Liberator,” and its picture-by-picture analyses by Judge Hanna and Irving Tomlinson, of our Leader’s poem, Christ and Christmas, it is explained that Jesus’ mission was “completed,” while Mrs. Eddy’s mission was “just beginning” (see picture #9, page 10). And, we know from Miscellaneous Writings that the ultimate mission of Christian Science is just what this Forum post addresses – “It is not alone the mission of Christian Science to heal the sick, but to destroy sin in mortal thought. This work well done will elevate and purify the race” (p. 4: 29-2 np).
So, as a result of Mrs. Eddy’s discovery of Christian Science, the full and final revelation of Truth, with her completing the explanation of God’s true nature, by bringing forth the womanhood of God – having encompassed Jesus’ teaching of the manhood of God (Jer. 31:22 – “A woman shall encompass a man”) – mankind’s progressive understanding and elevation of consciousness towards the realization of God as infinite Love, to whom sin is unknown, continues to be propelled ever forward until the glorious revelation that there is no sin, disease, or death, will be fully realized. “To infinite, ever-present Love, all is Love, and there is no error, no sin, sickness, nor death” (S & H, p. 567:7-8). Just as is brought out so clearly in this week’s Lesson that – through progress, growth, and gradual spiritual understanding, mortal man will “ripen” to the realization that “There is no death” (Lesson citation #10) – so will we all, individually and collectively, be elevated and purified to the realization that there is no sin. As Mrs. Eddy points out – how wonderful is that?!?!?
Thanks for broaching such a thought-provoking subject, which ties into this week’s Lesson so seamlessly, and which prompted some enlightening research! There is so much to study and contemplate on this all-important matter! (A few other relevant citations: S & H, p. 472:27-29; Miscellaneous Writings, p. 367:28-31; Habakkuk 1:13; Unity of Good, p. 3:24-25 & p. 7:22-24).
What a wonderful bounty. Thanks to all!
As I understand it, our consciousness of God and our consciousness of the true man are related. As it is written in Science and Health (SH p. 140:23) “The Jewish tribal Jehovah was a man-projected God, liable to wrath, repentance, and human changeableness. The Christian Science God is universal, eternal, divine Love, which changeth not and causeth no evil, disease, nor death. (The quotes from the Bible where God is said to know all sins probably refer to this Jehova.) “Know ye not, that to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are to whom ye obey; whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness?” Mrs. Eddy also says that we know no more of man as the true divine image and likeness, than we know of God. (SH p. 258.) Our God (our consciousness of God or what we actually really accept of Him) is constantly developing (and the inspired Word of the Bible is our guide in this). The Bible presents also differents phases of consciousness in its stories, which we also have to “translate” according to our present light and understanding. And just as in Mrs. Eddy’s writings, there are absolute and relative statements in it, which meet and help all at their present level of understanding. That is why we may get a different message from the same sentence at different times. So as we “strive to get in”, “evil becomes more apparent and obnoxious proportionately as we advance spiritually, until it disappears from our lives.” (SH 207:2) We are constantly “being convicted by [our] own conscience”, we either take the consequences of this, or we repent and as we put on the new man, our God-idea is aligned also with our purified thoughts and lives. Until we see perfect man, we will also not see perfect God and vica versa. “The Christlike understanding of scientific being and divine healing includes a perfect Principle and idea – perfect God and perfect man – as the basis of thought and demonstration.” (SH p. 259:11) This statement applies to BOTH God and man. Our picture/consciousness of God – who through our actual level of understanding of Truth and sin, through our own conscience sees all our sins – is individual. But “God has not forbidden man to know Him; on the contrary, the FATHER bids man have “the same Mind which was also in CHRIST JESUS”, – which was certainly the divine Mind; but God does forbid man’s acquintance with evil. Why? Because evil is no proper part of the divine knowledge.” (Unity of Good p.5) I guess we are getting there …, and until then we accept the words of those who went before us, like Mrs. Eddy and Jesus, that God is only good and knows no evil, and “the message which we have heard of him, and declare unto you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.” (1 John 1:5).