Christ’s consistency and ours
A Christian Science perspective. Understand the value and origin of being consistent.
Consistency may not sound like much of a virtue, but it is a big asset in human relations. Where consistency counts most is in day-to-day behavior. What if we were consistently kind under all sorts of circumstances or if we were consistently honest even under the pressure to lie?
If we want to experience more consistency in how we think and act, we can learn from the life of Christ Jesus. The book of Hebrews in the Bible speaks of him as “Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and to-day, and for ever” (13:8). His consistency was drawn from the unchangeable nature of God, Spirit.
Jesus was the Son of God and he expressed the divine nature. The Savior held to this standard of God-derived holiness throughout his life, and this made him a consistent friend of humanity – a consistent healer and teacher.
Christ Jesus explained the guiding standard for his conduct when he said, “The Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father do: for what things soever he doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise” (John 5:19).
Jesus, the Savior, opened the way for us to find consistency in our lives by teaching that each of us is truly the child of God. By living a life true to God, his Father, he was demonstrating the universal truth of man’s likeness to the divine Spirit.
Divine Principle is a name for God used in Christian Science that describes God as immutable good and the creator of all – the supreme Lawgiver. His law is expressed through qualities that are true to His nature – such as the spiritual qualities of integrity and love. As the spiritual offspring of God, we inherently reflect the steadfastness of divine Principle. And this is our basis for being able to develop a more consistent adherence to good in ourselves.
Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, writes of man as the undeviating reflection of God: “The relations of God and man, divine Principle and idea, are indestructible in Science; and Science knows no lapse from nor return to harmony, but holds the divine order or spiritual law, in which God and all that He creates are perfect and eternal, to have remained unchanged in its eternal history” (Science and Health, pp. 470, 471).
The Christ-spirit that Jesus lived is present with us today, telling us of our inherent integrity, love, and purity as Love’s reflection. We become receptive to these truths, and they transform us, as we silently pray and sincerely desire to understand God and our relation to Principle. With this spiritual view of our relationship to God, we can put Christly consistency into practice.
We can get to know God as the inexhaustible source of all the spiritual qualities that can make our daily conduct steady. It’s God, who is Love and Truth, who expresses in us loving kindness and honesty. We can possess these qualities at all times because God never stops being good for a minute. We can, for example, trace our ability to be unwaveringly fair or dependably kind to God’s constancy as forever Love, divine Principle.
Turning to God in prayer and understanding more and more of our relationship to Him, we can feel Truth and Love motivating our desires, making moments of kindness and honesty natural. They are completely natural to God’s reflection, and that’s a spiritual fact that supports us when it takes a real effort to avoid reacting negatively to people or situations.
What if we feel able to maintain a superficial calm or politeness, but don’t feel able to hold up under stress? Using strong will to construct a facade of good behavior doesn’t succeed in the long run. Our steadiness in human relations comes not from personal endurance, but from understanding and reflecting more of the divine nature God expresses in His image – in you and me.
The divine nature that the Savior expressed is available today. It is the eternal Christ, which speaks the truth of God and man to human consciousness. The Christ assures us that consistency belongs to us. The Christ lifts our understanding of ourselves higher and higher, enabling us to confidently turn to divine Principle as the source of our dependable unselfishness, love, and integrity.