Loving the Unlovable

In answer to the question why God permits evil, the discoverer of Christian Science, Mary Baker Eddy, once replied to a student, “He didn’t create evil. It isn’t created!” (she elaborates on this subject in Christian Science versus Pantheism, pp.5-6) She explains that in the spiritual reality, there’s no opposite to good, God, and no thought or action other than good. The divine government is perfect, and has always been so. And God’s expression, man, is perfect, too.

This realisation healed a longstanding history of family abuse and finally dementia, as related by Connie Pierce in a Christian Science Journal testimony.

She was several thousand miles away from home when she received a call that her mother was dying. Rather than feeling relief as many supposed she would, she was overwhelmed with regrets. You see, her mother had been abusive to her the whole of her life, including the last five years when her family had taken care of her mother in their home. No one understood why she’d spent over 50 years trying to achieve a loving relationship with this woman. Now her mother was in her 90s, had dementia, and couldn’t walk.

However, Connie was convinced she had to fix this relationship before she died. While waiting in the airport to fly home, she read from Science and Health this passage, which really spoke to her: “When the human element in him struggled with the divine, our great Teacher said: ‘Not my will, but Thine, be done!’—that is, Let not the flesh, but the Spirit, be represented in me. This is the new understanding of spiritual Love. It gives all for Christ, or Truth. It blesses its enemies, heals the sick, casts out error, raises the dead from trespasses and sins, and preaches the gospel to the poor, the meek in heart.”¹

When she arrived at the hospital, her mother was still alive, though unconscious. She looked gray—like she wouldn’t last long. Connie turned to God, pouring out all her heartache. The answer came to say out loud the prayers her mother knew. She did so that day, and the next day, while thinking about them herself. Soon her mother was mouthing the words along with her.

She didn’t die. And that night, Connie awoke to a message, that came again several times over the next few days—”Connie, you don’t need to fix this relationship. That’s not what this is all about. Your job is to see her as My child. You don’t have to make the relationship work. I love you already, and I love her.”

She relates that somehow this sank in, and she let go of the thought that she was a victim, that she needed to change her mother, that she could change her, that her mother needed changing before she could love her, or before she could love Connie. And finally, she just loved.

The next time she went to see her mother in hospital, she’d been moved to another ward and was actually getting better. When she found her in her new room, her mother motioned to come sit by her side.

Connie relates that she was then given one of the holiest moments of her life. Her mother spent an hour telling her how much she loved her. She’d never done this before.

She came home again, and they spent the next six months together. The dementia was gone, and she was in full possession of her faculties. She was nothing but loving from that day forward. (C Pierce, Loving the Unloving, CS Journal, Aug 2001) . . .

The belief that she or her mother was evil, or a sinner, had to be let go . . . and a beautiful healing resulted.