Let Christ calm the economic waters

from the Christian Science Sentinel

World and personal finances look volatile, but God’s goodness and His care for us don’t vary. We can trust this.

Much of my retirement income is in US dollars, but I live in France. The exchange rate has greatly reduced this income. I can pray to know that my true supply comes from God alone. Is there more that I can do to help the achievement of balance in international trade and monetary exchange?

We reflect the completeness and totality of God.

One thing that comes to mind is the question of who we are. We reflect the completeness and totality of God Almighty Himself, or Herself, which means that we reflect continuously and without loss every facet of God. So this description of someone as a retiree is based on a human assessment that we have a beginning and an end. And that someone who is a retiree is closer to the end than to the beginning. I think there’s an opportunity here for us to rethink some of the elements of our identity that we may have accepted into our thought.

If world opinion has a very strongly held view that retirees have limited financial resources, more limited than someone who is currently working, those opinions, which are so universally held, can find their way into our thoughts even if we aren’t aware that we brought them in ourselves. There is therefore a need to be alert to these thoughts. And of course, Mary Baker Eddy, who discovered and founded Christian Science, doesn’t just point out the problems; she provides us with the answer, the antidote. And that is the alertness to identify these false assumptions and correct them. The correction is that man is continually productive and vital, and therefore it would be very natural for that vitality and productivity to express supply and abundance forever.

There seems to be so much greed in these turbulent economic times. How does one keep from becoming fearful and discouraged about not having the supply they need?

God’s love radiates just because of who God is.

In classical economics, the very, very strongly held view for a long time (several hundred years) has been that fear and greed are the primary motivators of mankind. And financial markets are based on that assumption. Of course, fear and greed are human inventions. They are not qualities of God. The all-loving and all-providing God, who tenderly cares for each and every idea, clearly is not greedy. God’s love radiates just because of who God is. It is God’s nature to shine forth like the sun.

It is not God’s nature to withhold. But it is God’s nature to be entirely certain and trusting of Her own abundance, so there’s no place for fear. This is one of the core teachings of Jesus, and Mrs. Eddy has shown us how to deal with fear in our prayers. When one is very fearful, it’s hard to think. It can almost paralyze one’s thought. It clearly does not come from God, and because it doesn’t come from God, it can be replaced. It’s a mistaken view of things.

The antidote to fear, Mrs. Eddy explains, is seeing God more clearly as Love, as the source of unending love, unwavering love, unconditional love—a love that does not contract and expand based on market factors. God’s will is to be Himself and to be loving. It is God’s will that creation reflect purity, completeness, and totality. So there is no place for fear, and whenever fear tries to present itself, we can turn our back on it as an incorrect assessment of who we are and of who God is, and replace it with the correct view—that we have this noble and indestructible relationship with our Maker that never changes. It never deteriorates.

Can you speak on balance in our family economics and business and world economics? I have worked to balance the synonyms of God and to see our relationship to the abundance of right ideas.

My own sense is that Mrs. Eddy chose those synonyms to provide different perspectives on God. They’re each their own window into God’s nature. So there’s one God, but these different synonyms give us different perspectives on Him. To me, Principle includes a sense of order, of balance. Truth includes a sense of fairness and equity. Love definitely includes a sense of the fatherhood and motherhood, that God is the provider.

God’s order is not fragile. Nothing about God is out of kilter.

I suppose one element of order is that nothing can be knocked out of balance, that God’s order is not fragile. The economy is largely viewed as mostly fragile, that any number of things can knock it out of kilter. But there is nothing about God that is out of kilter. There’s nothing about God that is sensitive or fragile or that can be destroyed. God’s provision can’t be cut off. God is so complete, so good, so omnipotent, and also so present that all needs are known and provided for.

In the past year I have faced many unexpected financial challenges. In each instance, through prayer and constant trust in God, I have been lifted safely out of each situation. My question is, How can I address the fact that every time I seem to heal a financial challenge, I’m faced with another one?

A couple of thoughts come to mind. One is that it is right, normal, and natural to expect an increasingly harmonious life as a result of consistent prayer. Each healing and each prayer is a kind of transformation. It does not leave us where it found us. Mrs. Eddy points to examples in the world of natural science where something evolves. An acorn evolves into a tree. The tree doesn’t go back and become an acorn again. It’s left that stage of its experience. When we’ve been healed, when we’ve reached spiritual clarity about who God is and who we are, even if it’s in a small degree, it’s a step forward. It is not God’s law that we deal with the same thing over and over again.

It seems that some of the difficulties in the economic scene today are the result of individuals in powerful positions acting improperly with self-interest or carelessness. How can we pray for this larger scene?

These human problems are a little bit like the belief of darkness. You know the darkness isn’t a thing in its own right. It’s simply the absence of light. These problems, whether they seem highly individualized and maybe as close to us as literally the nose on our face, or as distant as a so-called world problem like management of world economies, are all the result of collective human consciousness and thought. And so, as each of us spiritualizes our thinking and brings our thoughts more in line with the spiritual facts, we are also lifting world thought.

The suggestion comes that the economy is stagnant and that Americans, for example, homeowners, are stuck—can’t sell, can’t buy. Your thoughts, please.

We are God’s reflection, we and the entire economic system.

One way to test the spiritual purity, or correctness of a thought, is to ask if it’s true about God. We are God’s reflection, we and the entire economic system. Mrs. Eddy uses the phrase, “the universe, including man” (see Science and Health, p. 295) several times. She wasn’t just thinking of individual human beings as being the result or reflection of God, but the entire universe itself, including all systems of ideas. So if we feel stuck, is God stuck? For a thought to be true about me, it needs to be true about God because I’m God’s reflection. So I would ask, Is God stuck? And the answer is no.

God is infinite intelligence. God is Life. He’s actively managing every single idea. God is intelligent Mind, has all these ideas, all reflecting Him, fulfilling His purpose, all blessing each other, and all in perfect harmony. No imbalance, no lost ideas, no used-up ideas, no devalued ideas, no written-off ideas. The only thing that is written off or dropped is the incorrect view of God and His creation.

How can we look at the fluctuating financial market and not let this create panic and stress in our life?

Is God’s goodness or God’s care for me as His child variable? Does God’s care for His creation go up and down? Is there any scenario where God panics? God is infinite intelligence and goodness. God is all the goodness there is, constantly radiating out of His being.

Volatile financial markets are a misrepresentation of the divine economy.

The universe, including individual man, is the reflection of that unending, unwavering goodness. So these volatile financial markets are a misrepresentation of the divine economy. They can be a gross mischaracterization of what is true and substantial and real. We always have a choice as to what we think. We do not have to believe the popular human thought that our supply, that upon which we depend for our very life, can diminish through no fault of our own. And the reason that is not true is that there isn’t a single element or aspect of God that diminishes—ever. We are never cut off from Him, never separated from Him. We are at the center of His affections. He is feeding us steadily and continuously, and we can trust that.

Who’s rule is it that we could doubt that He would care for us? It’s not a divine rule. There is no end to God’s care for us. It is immediate and here. And so these things that would distract do not need to distract us. It is not our nature to doubt God. It is not our nature to be confused by unreal human scenarios. It is our nature to be Godlike. It is our nature to see what God sees. It is our nature to believe God and trust God. Therefore, it is our nature to love every other element of God’s expression—our fellow man, this idea called the economy, as well as needs being fulfilled in ever creative and infinite ways. We can love that idea, and we don’t have to be burdened with the mischaracterization of it.

We tend to think that the answer to financially related stress must be in the form of more financial resources. Is it possible that, in some cases, an apparent financial loss is God revealing that the source of good and supply of what is needful is not money or possessions?

There are some interesting things in that question, and I think there are some who might think that God is punishing us in this economic cycle. That we’ve been too materialistic, and we sort of deserve what we’ve got here. And there are some important distinctions to be made in that particular vein. It’s my sense that to the degree we entertain thoughts that are not based on spiritual facts, these thoughts obscure the actual truths. And that may cause us to feel that we’re experiencing inharmony. But the thing that causes the inharmony is our acceptance of a mistaken view. It’s not God’s will. It is not my sense of God at all that God punishes man. God loves man.

Our own choice of ideas can constitute a kind of self-punishment. But the solution is to replace the mistaken ideas with the correct ones. So it’s possible that our focus and our inner desire may have drifted to self-satisfaction and to placating human pleasure excessively. Wherever that is the case, God is not reaching out and striking man down. These incorrect thoughts that any of us might hold can so obscure the truth that we experience a kind of mental darkness that can play out in unhappy human experiences. But we can correct these mistaken thoughts with truth, and thereby step out of a clouded consciousness into a more enlightened one, and there would be a natural change in our experience.

What if God just doesn’t seem to be supplying the answer? How do we get through the very serious times—maybe facing losing our home or feeding our kids—when God doesn’t seem to be answering?

It’s not our job to make God good or to make the universe more balanced. God’s already done that.

I understand the feeling that God does not seem to be answering us. But that does not alter the fact that God is actually always present. So what does it take to feel God’s presence if you’ve tried and it just isn’t happening? We keep trying because God is not beyond our reach. It’s not our job to make God good or to make the universe more balanced. God’s already done that. That’s His job, and He did it.

Our job is to acknowledge, to yield to it. It’s not so much that we have to construct perfection, but to drop or let go of the fears and human assumptions that get in our way. In those times when it has felt very hard to feel God’s presence, I have found the 23rd Psalm to be a life preserver. And I’ve also found Mrs. Eddy’s hymns to be life preservers—they give us something to hang on to. And we can build on that. But right where things seem to be darkest, God is actually there. We can put our hand in His, and He will lead us. And that 23rd Psalm has some wonderful, very specific statements about care. “He [God] maketh me to lie down in green pastures.” I’m using Mrs. Eddy’s version here: “… [love] leadeth me beside the still waters.

“[Love] restoreth my soul [spiritual sense]: [love] leadeth me …” (Science and Health, p. 578).

We don’t have to do all these things. Love does it. We yield to it. We accept it, and we refuse to participate with the false argument. Even if the false argument presents itself over and over, we can always say no. And we can repeat it, saying that we will not accept something that we know in our heart of hearts is not true.