Tear Down the Walls of Your Church!

Richard H. Strain
April, 1972 Can you imagine your church services being held without any mental walls to separate you from the rest of the people in the 1 community? Can you imagine the influence of hymn singing, the solo, and the reading of the Lesson-Sermon going out for all to feel? Further, instead of your branch Church of Christ, Scientist, being thought of as a building located on a specific lot on a specific street, can you see it as representing a spiritual power-the power of Truth embracing the community? Actually everybody in your town is included in Church. You have a right to see each one as spiritual, the manifestation of Mind, understanding God and His Christ, free of medical theories, sensual attractions, beliefs of life in matter, and conflicting views of many minds. "How can it be done?" someone may ask. By lifting your concept of what Church is. It's not a building on a certain street. It's a healing idea of Principle at work in your community. If you start looking upon Church in this way, you will put the idea into operation, and it will start being manifested more and more as embracing your community. Mrs. Eddy writes in the first paragraph of her definition of "Church" in Science and Health: "The structure of Truth and Love; whatever rests upon and proceeds from divine Principle." 2 Every idea of God is included in Church. And aren't all His ideas enjoying the understanding of perfection and spiritual being continuously? Don't they all reflect the one Mind and therefore exist in complete agreement, forever conscious of where they really are? Then shouldn't we expect to see this manifested on the human scene? We should, and we can! What's holding back this result? The belief that we are all material mortals separate from God and from each other. Too often we agree with mortal mind that each individual has thinking power of his own, that he can or cannot do things according to his own will, that he can be intelligent or ignorant according to beliefs of birth, environment, and education. Too readily we believe that there are spirituallyminded and materially-minded individuals. We often think we're in a community of people believing or not believing in God, belonging or not belonging to a number of different religions. We believe all this, and we experience what we believe. Christian Science has come to us to show us the absolute, spiritual fact that this is a world where one Mind reigns in goodness and expresses itself all-powerfully right where every mortal seems to be. We have been given the privilege of learning the nature of this Mind and of putting our understanding into practical operation in our lives. God, Mind, doesn't see His perfect offspring as mortals at different stages of thought living together in a mortal community. And we, as Mind's expression, can't really know something God doesn't know. We should realize that the mortal view is a false view, only a dream. If we dream that we are walking around a town full of people of different types, what happens to those people when we wake up in the morning and find ourselves by ourselves in our own bed? They disappear with the dream. Mrs. Eddy writes, "Now I ask, Is there any more reality in the waking dream of mortal existence than in the sleeping dream?" 3 As we awake from believing we are mortals to discover that we are solely spiritual reflections of divine Mind, what of all those mortals that we have been believing we have been living with in our town, our country, our world? Our concept of them changes in the process of awaking to reality. At this point what are we mentally perceiving? We're seeing more of our true selfhood as spiritual. To a greater extent we're seeing that the universe is populated by spiritual beings, all reflecting the same Mind, all being directed by the same intelligent power, all controlled by wisdom, all in the same place-in Mind. Realizing that there is nothing divine reality, since, as Isaiah says, "I am the Lord, and there is none else, there is no God beside me," 4 enables us to cling to spiritual views. Once we realize there is nothing to matter but a dream or illusion, we come to have no desire to dwell on its nothingness. We eagerly desire to think of "whatsoever things are true," of the spiritual facts, or real conditions, Paul presents to us when he urges us to "think on these things." 5 As we do this, what we are seeing clearly from a spiritual standpoint will start manifesting itself in our experience. We will start seeing the community embraced within the realm of Christian Science.

To bring about this demonstration requires considerable praying on our part to accept the true idea of the community. It also requires alert practicing of what we understand of Christian Science. But isn't this devotion of thought worthwhile if it can bring a sense of love and peace to our community and to our world? To break down the confining habits that claim to separate one from his neighbors and his church from his community, one has to start changing his concept of everything. First of all, of those individuals who are close at hand. No longer can one afford to say, "Well, I'm a mature individual, but those kids sure don't know how to think and act correctly today." Nor can the young person indulge in thinking that someone older isn't "with it." A man can't say, "Well, isn't that just like a woman!" A woman can't shrug her shoulders and sigh, "You know men!" There is only one Mind. We must prove it at home, at business, at school, on the streets. We cannot acknowledge reality in mortal mind's manifold manifestations of separateness. As we start looking upon our neighbors as being included in Church, we will start more actively loving. We will be interested in the welfare of everyone. We won't let indifference take hold in any way. In. our present sense of our branch church membership as a limited group of attendants, we're usually alert to pray our way out of every difficulty that may present itself to the membership. If funds are lacking, we pray and expect to see Love meet the need. We pray for the right people to be elected church officers. Are you just as alert and willing to pray to see that there is no such thing as lack of supply in your community? Are you eagerly praying for the right representatives to be elected to run the government of your town, and then supporting them with your prayers? Are you claiming vigorously that every action in your community must unfold from Principle and therefore there is no room for sin or lawlessness of any kind? If windows get smashed or buildings burned, do you express fear and dismay, or do you eagerly get to work with your understanding of Science to see that perfect Church is the all-embracing fact and that such things can't actually take place because they don't proceed from divine Principle?" If Christian Scientists did this more regularly, instantly, willingly, their communities would be approximating the atmosphere of their churches. Scientists would see their own sense of Church expanding and enveloping the community in practical ways that result in blessings for everyone. Christ Jesus loved his Father, and because of this he prayed fervently for the healing and enlightenment of mankind. Look at the results! Look at the number of people throughout the centuries who have been blessed in varying degrees by his teachings. Do you love God? Are you willing to break down the walls, see your community embraced in God's love and pray for it? Think of the results!
1

Christian Science Quarterly Lesson-Sermon;

Science and Health, p. 583;

p. 250;

Isa. 45 : 5;

Phil. 4: 8.