Resisting the “Training” of the World

I am so grateful for this church and for all of God’s goodness that is freely given here.

Years ago, I had a small puppy, and a co-worker told me “either you’re training the puppy, or the puppy’s training you. There is no in-between.” That advice served me well during my time with that dog.

But it wasn’t until coming to Plainfield, and learning Christian Science along with having regular practitioner support, that I began to start seeing clearly the importance of resisting the “training” that the world thought and the human mind seems to constantly be trying to put us through.

Certainly it is clear that the news would attempt to train us to be fearful and to parrot their views, advertising would attempt to train us to purchase useless things so we feel complete somehow, our families might attempt to train us to put aside common sense to placate their desires, difficult people would attempt to train us to become aggravated, our bodies might attempt to train us to accept limitation or age, our bank account might attempt to train us that there is a lack of supply, and our past may have attempted to trained us in many poor behaviors and expectations. Even the autocorrect feature on my phone always seems to be trying to train me to say “Thank goodness” instead of “Thank God” and that seems to be a part of a larger issue where so-called artificial intelligence is trying to train the modern world to believe they can’t communicate or think without a computer in the midst of it.

In Doris White Evans’ book Sermons and Articles, she has the following quote: “Be so instant in Truth that error is always too late.” Learning to live this Science over these years has taken me away from the old stimulus / response way of thinking, where some bit of error would seem to come my way and then I would have had to figure out how to deal with it, to the point where my thought is now often so filled with Truth and Love that these suggestions of error are seen immediately as the offensive nonsense they are, and handled appropriately.

It has become clear to me that only through the understanding of Christian Science have I truly been able to recognize these erroneous attempts at training, and cast these evils out before they are able to wreak any havoc in my thought, in my body, or in my life. What a wonderful blessing Christian Science is! I am so grateful to Christ Jesus, Mary Baker Eddy, this church, and practitioner support for giving me the ability to fend off error and take in Truth and to more faithfully be the man God created me to be.