Monday, December 25, 2023

Seeing the Face of Christ in Each Other

“Christ of the Ozarks” in Eureka Springs, AR
Photo credit: Ron Lutz

I’ve never understood wars, and so-called religious wars are particularly incomprehensible. As a youngster, upon hearing of the disputes between the Catholics and Protestants in Ireland, I thought there must be something incredibly important to cause so much death and destruction. As an adult, I discovered it was basically a disagreement of semantics. When I began playing organ for the Catholics and Methodists a few years back, I learned many things about mainstream religion. As I’d only been exposed to Christian Science services before this, I had no idea what other churches thought of communion, Jesus, death, and the concept of God in general. I could go on and on about this, but there’s no reason to do so. The main thing I discovered is there is basically no difference in the Protestants and Catholics — certainly nothing to precipitate years of battle. And now we have denominations breaking apart over human rights. What a waste of time and energy, when we could simply follow Jesus’ two great precepts. Let’s love one another actively, and love God with every thought and action. Merry Christmas!

“The Christ was the Spirit which Jesus implied in his own statements: ‘I am the way, the truth, and the life;’ ‘I and my Father are one.’ This Christ, or divinity of the man Jesus, was his divine nature, the godliness which animated him. Divine Truth, Life, and Love gave Jesus authority over sin, sickness, and death. His mission was to reveal the Science of celestial being, to prove what God is and what He does for man.”

Mary Baker Eddy - Science & Health Page 26:10-18


“The name of Jesus is the name of one who was a man but saw the face of Christ in all his brothers and remembered God. So he became identified with Christ, a man no longer, but at one with God. The man was an illusion, for he seemed to be a separate being, walking by himself, within a body that appeared to hold his self from Self, as all illusions do. Yet who can save unless he sees illusions and then identifies them as what they are? Jesus remains a Savior because he saw the false without accepting it as true. And Christ needed his form that He might appear to men and save them from their own illusions.” A Course in Miracles - C-5.2:1-6

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