By Verona T. Garcia - Christian Science Sentinel, January 30, 2006
I used to be afraid that if I drew on the spiritual truths that I’d been learning in Sunday School, I’d find them faltering, and that they might even let me down. When other people prayed for me, their prayers worked, but my own prayers weren’t always effective.
Still, I realized that if I wanted to demonstrate God’s power in my life, I had to actually start using what I was learning. Maybe I was waiting for some super-inspired feeling, some kind of elation that I thought was supposed to come with healing. But my Sunday School teacher told us that you don’t have to have that feeling in order to heal. You just need to keep holding on to Truth, to God. To me, holding on to Truth means maintaining that we are good and we express all the qualities that God has, even when we seem to be lacking.
For example, if someone feels insecure, I can know that that person is complete and has everything he or she needs from God, has no need to hurt others, and would not want to, either.
It’s worth it to keep holding on to Truth because what you keep in thought is what you experience. If you face a lot of hardships, you need something solid to fall back on when everything and everyone else fails. And for me, that something is God.
Now, I have more faith in Christian Science—faith that God can and does help me. When I hit something sharp or somehow hurt myself, I immediately turn to God and refuse to be impressed by pain or any subtle suggestions of matter. And actually, I’ve had cold symptoms disappear by persisting and insisting that God made me well and nothing could ever change that, and that matter is powerless and unreal. Or, in the case of headaches, they no longer take over and impede my normal activity, as they had in other instances—and I argue for Truth, rather than succumb to fear and self-pity.
I also use Christian Science a lot in my relationships. I’ve learned that if you see people only as they choose to be seen, you’re going to have a lot of problems. It’s easier to get annoyed, frustrated, repulsed, and so on. So I reject whatever bad things the world may say about people, even when they’re glaring in my face, and I’ve found that the real individual—God’s child—does show him- or herself in the end.
Once I had an art class with a guy whom some would describe as a delinquent. He skipped most of his classes, always had to have a special teacher attend to him, bullied people—the works. My classmates either ignored him or told him to stop or shut up, always in a defensive or aggressive tone. I kept thinking that if they showed him some compassion, he wouldn’t be so annoying. When he took my pencil box and my stuff, trying to provoke me, I simply asked him to give them back, without being rude or afraid. At first he kept them, but in the end he gave them back to me. I noticed that when he’d done the same thing to another girl and she’d reacted a little heatedly, he’d hit her arm before leaving. I learned that often when you expect someone to act in an undesirable way, it somehow deprives him or her of the chance to be good.
Most people kind of looked down on the guy, because he behaved the way he did and looked unkempt. But some of us talked to him as we talked to our friends, and treated him like a normal kid, and I saw then that he was nicer, being helpful sometimes. I think everyone just wants to feel loved. When you respect people, seeing them as good because God made them good, they feel it, and they inevitably return it. So I would say hi to him in the hallways, and when he greeted me back, his mean front just fell away, because it wasn’t him. The true him was good, able to love and do good.
That same year another classmate and I began to talk more and spend time together. During the early stages of our friendships, I went through rough times. I didn’t know him very well and didn’t understand him well, either. When I felt hurt and frustrated (and he probably didn’t even know it), I turned to God. I refused to be angry, retaliate, or condemn him. I guess you could call it loving him. Like agape—the Greek word for brotherly love. Part of loving means you see in others the good they reflect from God. You continually uphold it, fight for it, and know that it’s the only truth about them. So, although I didn’t know this guy well, I already knew all that I really needed to know.
And guess what? I broke through. His self-established walls of apathy no longer stood, and he began to be more open, more real. We became good friends, and he was more caring and understanding. During one super-honest moment, he told me that he was different around me, that I understood him. And from what I gathered, he was quite grateful. And so was I! Before Grade 9 ended, he somewhat sheepishly told me that he was a better person. I could only smile knowing that all I’d done was see who he had always been—God’s man. And I’m really thankful for that.
Many times I’ve proved that when I choose to see people as God sees them, they respond in a good way. It does matter to them that someone took the trouble to dig beneath the human layers we all can somehow accumulate, and sometimes don’t know how to remove.
A new year has begun, and I’m going to have many opportunities to sharpen my God-given qualities and skills, especially perspicacity. Being perspicacious means having the spiritual insight to see the good in yourself and others, no matter what happens. As Sam Gamgee says in The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, . . . there’s some good in this world, and it’s worth fighting for.
Thank you, Verona, for relating so beautifully what I’ve often had trouble conveying to my son about how to respond to others. Years ago, I felt the inspiration in the words from hymn #316 where it says “Speak gently to the erring ones they must have toiled in vain; perchance unkindness made them so; O win them back a gain.” Your experiences and the spiritual insights that inspired you to “dig beneath the human layers” has to, hopefully, inspire others to do the same.