Don’t be a FOOL this April!
A “Met” for the Bible Lesson on “UNREALITY” for 3/31-4/6/03 by Warren Huff
Before our current Roman calendar, April 1st was celebrated as New Year’s day. So, Happy New Year to a Happy New You! One New Year’s resolution for a new beginning this spring would be to refuse to be anybody’s fool this April. To start with, set your watch and clocks forward this Saturday night (“Spring forward, Fall back”) so you don’t arrive at the END of Sunday School!
Golden Text: Don’t be FOOLED by false witnesses or false reports! Prov 14:5 In “my day,” kids used to say: “They lie like a R.U.G!” (Reversal, Unlike God) When you (mentally) wrestle (like Jacob) with any false report that “lies like a R.U.G.”, remember that you get: 1 point for every truth that gives you an “Escape;” 2 points for every truth that lets you “Take-down” any lie that is challenging your spiritual identity; 2 more points for every truth that enables you to gain a “Reversal” (of any lie that used to be on top); and, an undisputed win for every truth that leads to a “Pin” whereby a lie finally runs out of “wiggle room” in your thought.
Responsive Reading: Don’t be FOOLED by the heathen’s eye-witness “Aha”s, false accusations and idol worship of the impotent. “The Lord (who “hath done whatsoever he hath pleased”) hath been mindful of us; he will bless us;” (Ps 115:3,12)
Section 1: Don’t be FOOLED by outward appearances! “Don’t judge a book by its cover,” or a person by his or her physique and physical features. When you see others and their assets, what are you looking at? Practice looking into people’s eyes and souls (spiritual identities) for what God sees. Lot looked for and chose a lush landscape that quickly lost its luster in the day of reckoning when gross materialism was purged from Sodom and Gomorrah. In the lesson (Gen. 13:7-15) Abram provided a classic model of Middle East conflict resolution for his children, both the Israelis from his wife Sarah and the Palestinians from her handmaid, Hagar. Let’s consistently affirm Love’s on-going provision for all Her children of unlimited good, fearless joy and uncheated hope. These are spiritual ideas, available to all, “like numbers and notes.” (S&H 298:21)
Section 2: Don’t be FOOLED by worldly wisdom, or be mis-educated with false beliefs. “For the wisdom of this world is FOOLishness with God.” (I Cor. 3:19)
“Don’t trust every spirit, dear friends of mine, but test them to discover whether they come from God or not.” I John 4:1 JB Phillips translation
“You, my children, who belong to God have already defeated them, because the one who lives in you is stronger than the anti-Christ in the world. 5 The agents of the anti-Christ are children of the world, they speak the world’s language and the world pays attention to what they say. 6 We are God’s children and the man who knows God hears our message; what we say means nothing to the man who is not himself a child of God. This gives us a ready means of distinguishing the spirit of truth from the spirit of falsehood.” I John 4:4-6 JB Phillips translation
Shift to a higher gear by accepting your status as a Child Of God, a COG in God’s circle of Life.
“for God did not give us a spirit of cowardice, but rather a spirit of power and of love and of self-discipline.” II Tim. 1:7 NRSV
The example in the lesson of a lifelong cave-dweller, Kasper Houser, (S&H 194:17) illustrates a key point in Christian Science: that what we experience is determined by the belief system we are taught, more than by actual conditions. As Louis Pasteur (who first “pasteurized” milk) realized on his death bed and and stated concerning his lifelong study of bacteria: “The terrain is everything.” In other words, the terrain of one’s thinking where thought germs are planted is the controlling factor, not the nature of the bacteria. So, use Christian Science to train the terrain of your thought to determine its environment like a thermostat does, instead of only passively reacting to it, like a thermometer does.
Section 3: Don’t be FOOLED by fear and the fake i.d. of a foe. One definition of the verb challenge is to demand proof of the identity (Who goes there? Friend? or Foe?) of one wishing to pass. It’s helpful to see that “Mortal mind is the worst foe of the body, while divine Mind is its best friend.” (S&H 176:19) We are more likely to let our guard down when the enemy wears a non-combatant’s disguise: “A false sense of what constitutes happiness is more disastrous to human progress than all else that an enemy or enmity could obtrude upon the mind or engraft upon its purposes and achievements wherewith to obstruct life’s joys and enhance its sorrows.” (Misc. 9:30) What looks to you like happiness but really isn’t? Substitute “a false sense of what constututes happiness” as the enemy in this soldier’s prayer to not get captured: “Don’t let them get me, Lord! Don’t let me fall into their hands! For they accuse me of things I never did, and all the while are plotting cruelty.” Ps 27:12 LB
When you fly, security guards require you to present a photo I.D., literally your identity written in light. (photo=light +graph=write) CedarS’ mission is to reveal your written-in-divine-light identity and so “Strengthen ye the weak hands” (help you to get a firm grip on the fact that “only God can bring us gladness” — CS Hymn #263) “and confirm the feeble knees” (take a strong stand against the enemy, or a false sense of happiness) Isa. 35:3 (parenthesis added) “With this news bring cheer to all discouraged ones. 4 Encourage those who are afraid. Tell them, “Be strong, fear not, for your God is coming to destroy your enemies. He is coming to save you.” Isa 35:3,4 LB
Section 4: Don’t be FOOLED by false claims of the so-called science of genetics! When tested by his disciples’ Multiple Choice Nonsense question, (“Who did sin (A.) this man (or B.) his parents that he was born blind? –John 9:2) Jesus refused to buy into the false premise and instead created and chose “C. None of the above, or Does Not Apply.” Make this mental DNA translation (that it Does Not Apply) everytime you hear the deification of genetics as supposedly determined by DNA! By his healing method Christ Jesus, “the most scientific man that ever trod the globe” shows us how to “take the plunge” into spiritual healing instead of just allieviation of symptoms. “He plunged beneath the material surface of things, and found the spiritual cause.” (S&H 313:23) Jesus was showing us the spiritual cause for disease when he spat on the dust according to Bible scholar, B. Cobbey Crisler. Cobbey said that by spitting on the dust he was showing contempt (as one still shows it today in the Middle East) for a supposed dust (or material) origin of man as described in Genesis 2. By anointing it on the eyes of the blind man, far from advocating the medicinal properties of spit, Jesus was showing us a physical connection to the real cause of the blindness that needed to be washed away with a bit of man’s D.I.A.L origin from the 1st chapter of Genesis. (Divine Image And Likeness – see Gen. 1:26)
“The spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, a spirit of wisdom and understanding, a spirit of counsel and power, a spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord. 3 He shall not judge by what he sees nor decide by what he hears.” Isa 11:2,3 NEB
“once you were ‘darkness’ but now as Christians you are ‘light’.” Eph 5:8 PHIL
Section 5: Don’t be FOOLED by the fatal, “fancied joys” of lust. (S&H 252:28) “The sensualist’s affections are as imaginary,whimsical, and unreal as his pleasures.” (S&H 241:8) Sensualism springs from a sense of lack, but it cannot tempt you when “early and often” you affirm your complete satisfaction and bliss in being “head over heels” in love with Love. When you affirm that in God you have everything you need (B23, Col. 2:10) and that you know it, “you are conquering this false sense” (non-sense) of “the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes and the pride of life.” (I John 2:16) As Jesus promises “if your eye is single” (focused on God), “your whole body shall be full of light.” Then, the “evil eye” of double-mindedness will not fill you with darkness. (Matt. 6:22-23) Cherish your childlikeness that Jesus loved and guard it from being adult-erated by adult movies or websites that feature body worshipping. (As if size really mattered when the atomic particle of your body — that are 99% space — fit on the head of a pin!)
“See “the world” for what it is 15 Never give your hearts to this world or to any of the things in it. A man cannot love the Father and love the world at the same time. 16 For the whole world-system, based as it is on men’s desires, their greedy ambitions and the glamour of all that they think splendid, is not derived from the Father at all, but from the world itself. 17 The world and all its passionate desires will one day disappear. But the man who is following God’s will is part of the permanent and cannot die.” I John 2:15-17 JB Phillips translation
Don’t let yourself be pushed around by others perverted sense of reality and values. You know better! “Surely you know that when you surrender yourselves as slaves to obey someone, you are in fact the slaves of the master you obey — either of sin, which results in death, or of obedience, which results in being put right with God.” Rom 6: 16 TEV
“we are living no longer by the dictates of our sinful nature, but in obedience to the promptings of the Spirit.” Rom 8:5 JB Phillips translation
“Those who let themselves be controlled by their lower natures live only to please themselves, but those who follow after the Holy Spirit find themselves doing those things that please God.” — LB
“The carnal man sees no further than carnal things. The former attitude means, bluntly, death: the latter means life and inward peace.” Rom 8:6 JB Phillips translation
“My Children, this is the last hour! You were told that Antichrist was to come, and now many antichrists have appeared; which proves to us that this is indeed the last hour.” I John 2:18 NEB
“I have not written this warning as if I were writing to men who don’t know what error is. I write because your eyes are clear enough to discern a lie when you come across it.” I John 2:21 JB Phillips translation
Section 6: Don’t be FOOLED into staying focused on your rear-view mirror as you drive down the road! There’s no security in that strategy! It’s healing to view regret as showing ingratitude in the past tense, sentimentalism as showing ingratitude in the present tense and worry as showing ingratitude in the future tense, or as trying to drive while looking through binoculars. Instead, let’s live moment by moment with gratitude focused on all the good in the here and now! CS Hymn #238 heals sentimental “rear-view mirroritis” where the past always seems “the fairest of them all” by stating “all of good the past hath had Remains to make our own time glad.” This ties in with a verse from Philippians in the lesson that is a favorite met for CedarS Tire Traversal. (This team-building element consists of 19 tires strung over a Crown Lake cove to allow one to swing from one side of it to the other.) The lesson is to not keep holding onto the same tire (the past or present) or you’ll never get anywhere! As you swing remember: “This one thing I do, forgetting those things that are behind and reaching forth to those things that are before.” Or, as JB Phillips translates it: ” My brothers, I do not consider myself to have grasped it fully even now. But I do concentrate on this: I forget all that lies behind me and with hands outstretched to whatever lies ahead I go straight for the goal—my reward the honour of my high calling by God in Christ Jesus.” Phil 3:13, 14
“leave your foolish ways and live, follow the ways of thoughtful sense.” Prov. 9:6 Moffat translation
To connect day by day with trust and with gratitude: “6 And now just as you trust Christ to save you, trust him, too, for each day’s problems; live in vital union with him. 7 Let your roots grow down into him and draw up nourishment from him. See that you go on growing in the Lord, and become strong and vigorous in the truth you were taught. Let your lives overflow with joy and thanksgiving” Col 2:6,7 — LB
In 3 consecutive weeks of Bible Lessons about the unreality of evil, Mrs. Eddy drives home an essential element of Christian healing: “When we learn that evil is not real, we shall be ready for progress,’forgetting those things that are behind’.” (S&H 353:23) As Solomon puts it: “Forsake the foolish and live.” Prov. 9:6 What breaks the sometimes seemingly hypnotic spell of the FOOLISH “illusion of the senses” is “The Christ . . . — yea, the divine image and likeness dispelling the illusion of the senses.” (S&H 332: 11)
Aren’t you glad you use d.i.a.l. (Christ)? Don’t you wish (and just know) that everyone will “as the sense dream vanishes and reality appears?!” (S&H 312:6)
