Trick? or Treatment! (on “Probation After Death” lesson) to overcome all deadlines and dead-ends

Warren’s Sunday School notes for a 10-27 Sr. class on “Probation After Death:”
This lesson can be a great prep for Halloween, especially for teens & adults. Look at hourly choices as either Tricks (to submit to:) or as Treatments to overcome: Deadlines & Dead-end Relationships (w/Lifelines to God), Dead arms & legs (w/ lively limbs to finish strong), and Dead-headed carnal-mindedness (w/ the life & peace of spiritual-mindedness-Rom. 8:6). The answer is GRACE (“the capacity to terminate” or bring proper closure) under “the constant pressure . . . to come out from the material world and be separate.”(S&H 451:2)

GT: This week let’s receive the blessing promised in the GT by overcoming the temptation to fear and revere death (including the impure carnal-mindedness that Paul equates with death in Rom. 8:6). Refuse to be tricked, whatever the illusion, be it: the so-called pleasurable or painful nerve-endings of the senses; the sad endings of human lives, relationships and storylines; or depleted capacities and energies as our opportunities, situations, the markets or sports seasons change. (With a divine perspective, even a World Series ending or loss need not be sad.) Instead of being tricked by a ghostly sense of bad and sad endings that would haunt you, replace each of them with a powerful Christian Science treatment that affirms that “all of good the past hath had remains to make our own time glad” (CS Hymn #238:2 ). Giving spiritually proactive & retroactive treatments with an understanding conviction allows one to “receive the crown of life, which the Lord hath promised to them that love him.” (James 1:12) What “tricks” are you treating for your crown?

RR: David gives the basis for a Christian Science treatment to overcome all illusions of death when he says: “I have walked in mine integrity” and “thou upholdest me in mine integrity, and settest me before thy face for ever.” (Ps. 26:1 & 41:12) Integrity derives from the word integer, or whole number. (In the 4th section Jesus reassures Jairus that his daughter “shall be made whole.”) Your wholeness cannot be changed or fractionalize once you realize and know that the only possible divisor is ONE: “the all-knowing, all-seeing, all-acting, all-wise, all-loving and eternal” God! (S&H 587) That’s a new twist to the old military strategy to “Divide and Conquer!” Identify whatever would compromise your integrity and factor it out of your experience with the oneness of God that always underlies and upholds the wholeness and innocence of your being. Demonstrating your God-given wholeness with integrity is a sure way to meet our 1st SS Class goal: “To feel we are always in our “right place” at the right moment, doing everything that we need to do.”

Section 1: Day and night God “commands his lovingkindness . . . and . . . his song” — His COMMANDMENTS, or laws that prohibit evil and death — to be with you. (B1 and B2) His song becomes our all embracing and comforting song of “Whither shall I go from thy spirit?” (B3) Our trials (probations) are merely “tests of the Emerge-and-See Broadcast System” which is ever announcing, “even there shall thy hand lead me and thy right hand shall hold me.” (B3) B4 proclaims the lesson’s thematic conviction: “I will not die (be tricked into buying into any form of death or separation from God), but live and declare the works of the Lord.” Mrs. Eddy outlaws all loss (& death) when she states: “no loss can occur from trusting God with our desires, that they may be moulded and exalted before they take form in words and in deeds.” (S2, S&H 1:11) S3 reinforces God’s 3rd commandment of not taking God’s name, or nature, in vain, with the related idea that no prayer will “return unto us void.” (S&H 2:6) S4 illustrates an effective CS treatment as “This task (that) God demands us to lovingly accept to-day, and to abandon as fast as practical the material, (trick) and to work out the spiritual (treatment) which determines the outward and actual.” (S&H 254:20) (Underlining & italicised words added.)

Section 2: HANDLES TODAY’S SUPPOSED #1 KILLER, HEART-DISEASE, & two of its supposed causes, OBESITY and AGE B8 “My flesh and my heart faileth: but God is the strength of my heart, and my portion for ever.” With God as the source of our wisdom, happiness & portion control, we realize that we are “perfect and entire, wanting nothing.” (B8, James 1:4) As S9 (S&H 246:29) states “Let us shape our views of existence (our treatment) into loveliness, freshness, and continuity, rather than into age and blight.” (the trick) How can this type of shaping work help us achieve our class Goal #3? (“To understand and express leadership, humility, self-worth.”) How’s work on this shaping up?

Section 3: The Parable of the Talents (B10 – Matt 25:14-28) shows: 1) that what we do with what we have is more important than how much we have (Our Goal #2 of learning to “pray without ceasing” is linked to this portion of probation that requires us to consistently do right); 2) that the inactivity (death) of unimproved talents (& their decay & loss according to S13) “ensures failure at the outset” (S12); and, 3) that the apathy & procrastination of the servant with one talent was caused by a misperception that God is separate from the qualities (S)he gives and has unreasonable expectations of us. How does S15 apply to our Goal #5? (“To learn more about the basis of CS-what our real goal should be.”)

Section 4: In the healing & raising of Jairus’ daughter, Jesus’ shows us how to heal (our SS Goal #7) even when the spiritual atmosphere is “beset by fearful odds” (S14) When Jesus enters Jairus’ house, the setting is not conducive to spiritual healing. In fact, paid mourners greet him, his disciples & the immediate family with weeping & wailing. What does Jesus cleverly & accurately say in B12 (Luke 8:52) to make all the paid mourners laugh and so “break their contracts?” After they are bounced from the house, the 12-year old “dead” girl is “made whole.” (an integer) (Luke 9:50) This Christian (Science) healing and Jesus’ statement that “it is not the will of your Father, . . . that one of these little ones should perish” (B13. Matt. 18:14) are perfect answers to the Sunday TV presentation of a trumped-up case on “The Practice” in which a child of Christian Scientists died without receiving medical care. We can forgive the ignorance (or ignore-ance) that spread this false witness and can also pray with our faith-healing brethren that their prayers be answered as surely as ours are, so that all may truly witness God’s will being done. This type of forgiveness & inclusiveness is advancing our class Goal #4: “To feel God’s love & then express it all the time in kindness & forgiveness (even with family or with cliques at school.)” As part of this goal, let’s discuss the healing & forgiveness of those who seem to be making amoral choices. Although Jesus was never the friend of sin, he was always a friend of sinners. (Luke 15) I love the way that Jesus dealt with the accusers of the adulterous woman by writing in the dust after suggesting: “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.” (John 8: 7) His classic comment to her after they had left, “Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more,” (John 8:11) guides all needing to give & receive forgiveness today.

Section 5: Jesus’ resurrection and ascension started a powerful revolution. When his disciples learned he had not died, “it all finally clicked” and they did many mighty works. (See B15,S20) They reached our Goal #6: “A mental stature and conviction that can recognize and challenge false influences like advertising, peer pressure, the drag of materialism, absorption in one thing to the exclusion of all others, and especially fear (like the fear of speaking in front of large groups.) How’s progress here for you?