Skip to footer

Stepping out of chaos

As we let the divine Mind, God – rather than fear and turmoil – inform our thoughts and view of the world, we find that light, joy, and harmony increasingly characterize our experience.

  • By Rich Evans

Christian Science Perspective audio edition
Loading the player...

Is there a way out of chaos and into order and harmony? The present need for that is acutely felt and deeply sought everywhere. But in searching for such a path in the midst of a disordered world, is it possible that chaos itself could be a harbinger of the peace we yearn to see?

The promise of that is found in this remarkable statement by Mary Baker Eddy in her book “Unity of Good”: “The chaos of mortal mind is made the stepping-stone to the cosmos of immortal Mind” (p. 56).

Maybe chaos nudges a natural desire in us to step away from it. In order to be free of the exhaustion of inharmony, it is natural – spiritually innate – for us to seek something else, to reverse direction, to move toward safer, more peaceful ground. There we can begin to see the opposite condition, the orderly, harmonious universe – the cosmos – of immortal Mind, God. Dissatisfaction with the materialistic, chaotic life arising from the limitations of a material mentality that would seem to veil the divine Mind becomes a strong impetus to move in the opposite direction.

For example, if we feel hated or hateful, we can remove that sense by turning directly to divine Love, God, and expressing such love that it pulls us and others out of discord and inharmony. It doesn’t matter how often we feel the need to reverse our course of thought and action, because this powerful sense of Love is Principle and therefore always at hand and active.

If attentive, we can detect early the fear that underlies chaos or hatred and let our thoughts be informed by divine Mind in a peace-generating direction. No chaotic, mortal mind can influence our life to blur our vision of the true course leading to freedom, accord, and stability.

In “Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures,” Mrs. Eddy articulated her discovery – the divine laws that governed Christ Jesus and enabled him to do the works of primitive Christianity, preaching and proving the laws of God. Those laws govern us today.

In this book, we’re asked if we have accepted the mortal model of ourselves and others that the world holds before our gaze. Perhaps this model appears as the chaos of matter-based living that could seem as attractive as it is frightening. But that model is imperfect. It can be vicious and hideous and can limit our lifework and our view of humanity. The remedy is evident: “... we must first turn our gaze in the right direction and then walk that way” (p. 248).

What a word, “gaze.” Beyond merely looking or seeing, there is intention in gazing. Gazing at stars, we’ve chosen to discover something new to us – a constellation, satellite, or aurora. Or, closer to us, gazing through the lens of Spirit, we discern humankind’s amazing, infinite individuality.

Where should we be gazing to reverse our drift toward the mortal model, the darkness and chaos of world belief that would trap humanity in the apparent reality of matter and its conflicts? The reverse, the perfect model, is “unselfishness, goodness, mercy, justice, health, holiness, love – the kingdom of heaven” reigning within all of us (Science and Health, p. 248). There’s nothing chaotic about any of that; in fact, as these divine qualities are lived, discordant conditions lose their influence until they disappear.

Why? Darkness and chaos have no place in God, Mind, and the infinite harmony and order that are actually present. When we turn our gaze toward God, we find that Mind’s light and joy overtake and exclude the darkness and sorrow of chaos. Then chaos has been made our steppingstone to the cosmos, the ever-present and immortal harmony of divine Mind, and no longer causes fear.

A scriptural example of turning one’s gaze in the right direction is Saul, later known as Paul (see Acts 9:1-20). He was afraid that the new teachings of Jesus would disrupt the world he knew. He sided with the suppressors of a dawning Christianity.

But his own moment of awakening, turning his gaze toward Christ and finding light in the midst of darkness, led to a lifetime of sustained expansion of the power of Christ-love and its peace. This was the new order – the true cosmos of divine Mind – the spiritual reality toward which to set our gaze, one that the transformed Paul never failed to pursue and prove.

We needn’t fear chaos. Instead, we can see it as the harbinger of a change in direction, of a step for us all toward immortal Mind’s order and harmony.

Adapted from an editorial published in the April 1, 2024, issue of the Christian Science Sentinel.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe

Give us your feedback

We want to hear, did we miss an angle we should have covered? Should we come back to this topic? Or just give us a rating for this story. We want to hear from you.

 
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to Stepping out of chaos
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/A-Christian-Science-Perspective/2024/0506/Stepping-out-of-chaos
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe