Remember that Salt 'n' Pepa song from 1991, "Let's talk about sex"? The chorus says,

Let's talk about you and me
Let's talk about all the good things
And the bad things that may be

So, OK. Let's. Only, let's change things up, baby. Let's talk about sin.

Mention sin and some automatically think of sexual immorality or wrong-doing to a neighbor. But, Christian Science broadens the term to include any action or thought that tries to separate one from the divine source of all good, from God.

In that sense, sin is the ultimate distraction.  It obscures one's ability to see, feel and experience the healing Christ. It shuts down inspiration. It depletes energy and zaps joy.  Sin makes one feel unwilling and unable to understand and practice Christian healing. This makes sin an assassin, crushing joy, peace, effectiveness at healing, harmony and health. It kills and kills and keeps killing until it is exposed and stopped.

When it comes to sin, we have to be willing to look at it. Unmask it. Pop it out from under cover and eliminate its toxic and deadly influence on us. Over the centuries, sin has been discussed under seven so-called carnal or deadly categories - anger, lust, gluttony, sloth, envy, greed, and pride. Under these seven categories you can effectually list any negative trait or behavior that is anti-Christ.  Christ Jesus’ Lord’s Prayer can provide a helpful springboard for addressing any category of sin. For example:

Our Father, which art in heaven addresses ENVY. No one is left out of “OUR” Father. No imbalance. No haves and have nots.  Through our connection with the Father-Mother each one of us is linked directly to heaven. No one and nothing can limit our expression and experience of good. No exceptions. (Here is another blog post that illustrates a cool healing of envy.)

Hallowed be Thy name takes care of ANGER. It is God’s name and nature that is hallowed, that is honored and worshipped as holy. True worship involves not just appreciating but reflecting that holy nature. There is no reaction in reflection.  Reflection is a response or a giving back to the original, but never a reaction to the original or to any other source.

You know what healed Jacob of his anger and fear at Peniel?  He saw God face to face – that’s what Peniel means: "God face to face."  Reflection.  To see God, was to see himself. So what was that angel Jacob wrestled? A correct view of himself as Godlike. When he glimpsed his own real nature, he found no anger there. Hallowed be God’s nature.  Hallowed be yours. (Check out another post on healing anger.)

Thy kingdom come; Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven is a great one for SLOTH.  God’s kingdom is the atmosphere of ideas in which we work. God’s will is our motivator and goal. Praying to know and yield to the divine will for good and only good eliminates stubbornness and  self-will.  This shift produces more order at home and at work.  It redeems from procrastination, mental dullness, spiritual apathy and laziness.  (Could you use some ideas on mastering self-will? Check out this post.)

Give us this day our daily bread can be really helpful in eliminating GLUTTONY. Hoarding and overindulgence in any form is handled when we drop the fear that what we love or what we need may not be here today. But God’s grace is here today. Everyday. It satisfies our needs and desires. He sends us spiritual ideas to feed our famished affections and meet our needs. Taking what he gives, accepting our daily bread, produces balance and satisfaction. No more overeating, overspending, overindulging, overreacting, over-saving, overstocking, and even oversleeping – all gluttonous behaviors. (Looking for that unlimited supply of grace and good? Check out this post.)

And forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors is helpful against GREED.  It is an equation of sorts with the word “AS” as the equal sign.  And Love is reflected in love.  God forgives and we forgive.  God gives, and we give.  The divine Principle, or God, of supply includes balance and generosity and abundance for all. (See another post on this one, too.)

And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil offers a wit-sharpening, courage-inducing prayer to counter LUST. The book of Esther in the Bible tells the story of Vashti, Ahasuerus’ queen, who refused to cater to her husband’s deviant request that she parade herself naked before his friends. It took such moral courage at great personal risk to take that stand before her husband and king. Even though it cost her a human crown, later Scripture confirmed that her virtue was her real crown!  Proverbs states, “A virtuous woman is a crown…:”  Proverbs 12:4

Perhaps the issue with lust is not so much that the suggestions come, as it is that we have the power to choose, as Vashti did, to follow the leadings of good – that is, to acknowledge and act on the natural force, the powerful draw, to purity.

God doesn't lead us into temptation. Ever. Lust is not a natural propensity of man. The Lord’s Prayer helps us master and express our natural propensities for purity, moral courage, and goodness. (Yup, I have an interesting post on sex.)

For THINE is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever is a good line for flushing out PRIDE.  I have an old cartoon clipping.  Two monks are examining a list of the seven deadly sins.  One monk said to the other, “After you’ve successfully resisted the other six deadly sins, its really hard not to be proud!”

What is real belongs to God. Acknowledging God’s kingdom, power and glory is an ultimate statement of humility, and humility counteracts pride – an inflated or deflated sense of one’s self.  Pride can take the form of superiority or inferiority. We've got to root out both.

God is the kingdom in which you work, the power with which you work, and the glory for which you work – now and forever.  That idea can take you far. (And here are a few more thoughts on the kingdom to nourish your prayers.)

During a class to train Christian Science teachers, a student named Mrs. Otis asked Mary Baker Eddy how she was to demonstrate over weak eyes.  The response was, "Make yourself better every hour and don’t think of eyes.”  (Joshua Bailey notes, Mary Baker Eddy Library)

Make yourself better every hour.  Eliminating the influence of sin in our own lives brings the clearest discernment, deepest compassion, and strongest spiritual authority.  It makes one an effective healer.

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It's more than just what you say, or even what you do with a patient. Bedside manner, the good and the bad of it, extends to what you think, how you think, and what you do when you are NOT at the patient’s side. Christian healer and teacher Mary Baker Eddy understood that the morality and the spirituality of the practitioner affect outcomes on their cases, regardless of their method of practice.

How did she know? Experience. Before the discovery of the scientific method of divine healing, which she would name Christian Science, Mrs. Eddy practiced – and later abandoned – homeopathy. A woman came into her homeopathic practice with a case of what was then called dropsy and today would likely be called edema due to congestive heart failure. The woman had been unsuccessfully treated by another homeopath, whose dosage of medicine caused an apparent bad reaction.  

Mrs. Eddy took the case and treated according to her understanding of proper dosage, and the woman steadily improved. But Mrs. Eddy soon discovered that, in fact, her prescription was identical to that of the prior physician – the same type and dosage that under his care produced horrible side-effects and under her care resulted in improvement.

Why were the outcomes different? She later would explain in her textbook on Christian Science, “The doctor’s mind reaches that of his patient …His thoughts and his patient’s commingle, and the stronger thoughts rule the weaker. Hence the importance that doctors be Christian Scientists.” (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, 197)

She also wrote, “The moral and spiritual facts of health, whispered into thought, produce very direct and marked effects on the body.” (ibid 370)

About  that homeopathy case and other cases like it, Mrs. Eddy later noted that she was always praying to God to keep her from sin, and to guide her in her care for others. The Greek word for “sin” is Hamartia (Ham ar TEE ya) which can be translated ‘to miss the mark”. To be kept from sin includes to be kept from making mistakes and to hit the mark rightly in all things.

"The doctor’s mind reaches that of his patient… “ Mrs. Eddy encouraged healers of all methods, medical doctors included, to clean up their thoughts and life of anything that might affect their patients adversely. She wrote, " If hypocrisy, stolidity, inhumanity, or vice finds its way into the chambers of disease through the would-be healer, it would, if it were possible, convert into a den of thieves the temple of the Holy Ghost, — the patient’s spiritual power to resuscitate himself." (ibid 365)

I read that one day and thought, "Hypocrisy? Stolidity? Inhumanity? Vice? Who me?"

Then I remembered a case where I asked something of a patient – to consider a spiritual concept more deeply – that I had not and was not doing myself. His healing did not come.  When I realized my error, - the hypocrisy even - of demanding something of someone else that I was not practicing myself, I got to work and did the assignment. Then the man was quickly healed.

What about stolidity? It's the state of being unmoved mentally, impassive, unemotional. Had I ever been stolid in my treatment work, perhaps going through the technical motions but stopping the prayer before I felt the mental movement of the Holy Ghost in my consciousness? Hmmm.

How about in my life? Had I ever passed by someone in need without praying? Or put on a hard face when confronted with poverty or crime in the street or on the news? I could see I could do better for my practice by eliminating all traces of stolidity from my life.

Inhumanity? Now here I was really sure I was innocent. But then I asked myself if I had ever delayed to pray for someone until I was finished working on something else. Had I ever put my personal needs before someone in pain or suffering from fear? I remember the time I forgot to treat a patient that I had agreed to pray for. I got busy with another commitment and hours passed before she got the help that she had requested and that I had agreed to give. That's neglectful. Putting selfish interest before the needs of others, too, is cruel. Neglectful, cruel and inhumane are synonymous.

What about vice? Well, we all know my Oreo cookie story. (Listen here if you don’t.)

Look. This post isn’t about true confessions. I am talking about cleaning up one’s bedside manner to be a better transparency for the healing Christ. We can all likely do better. I know I can. In fact, until we consistently heal instantaneously, we must DEFINITELY do better.

In Christian Science practice, the healer has to be sharp and aware. His treatment must witness to the Holy Ghost and its healing action on the patient. But if the healer is distracted or preoccupied by unhealed hypocrisy, stolidity, inhumanity, or vice, he may not be as sharp and as aware as he needs to be of what the Christ, through the Holy Ghost, is doing for the patient.

Here are two tips for improving your bedside manner.

1. Don’t miss praying the Daily Prayer for yourself each day. Really pray it. Ask yourself, How can I witness more to the good of divine Truth, Life and Love in my life? Am I willing to let God rule all sin out of me? If it is the so-called “little” sin that is preventing you from healing instantly, would you be willing to stay awake and alert, and let even the slightest error go?
   
2. Watch the big four – hypocrisy, stolidity, inhumanity and vice. Mary Baker Eddy didn’t pull them out of a hat. They are common pitfalls, sneaky and sometimes persistent errors, that would derail effective practice if we aren’t alert to the many deceptive forms they assume.

We want to be good, really GOOD at helping and healing, right? Good bedside manner involves more than a friendly face and a kind word. Regular prayer to be kept from sin and asking God or guidance on cases should unmask and destroy any lurking sin that would prevent one from being a genuine aide.

Don't let yourself be stuck in self-condemnation or guilt. Science and Health is quite clear on this point. Mrs. Eddy explained that they, along with a faltering or doubting trust in Truth, God, "are unsuitable conditions for healing the sick. Such mental states indicate weakness instead of strength… You must utilize the moral might of Mind in order to walk over the waves of error and support your claims by demonstration.” (Science and Health, 455)

Christ Jesus gave wise counsel to all healer’s: “First cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye.” (Matthew 7:5) And the Daily Prayer reminds us to "let the reign of divine Truth, Life, and Love be established in me, and rule out of me all sin." (Manual of The Mother Church, Article 8, Section)

Patients, too, have a role to play in healing. No free passes here! My next post will speak to this recently unpopular and sometimes touchy point.

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God is divine Good, pure Spirit, infinite Love, resplendent Soul. Just as Light isn't vindictive toward the darkness it displaces, God, pure good, doesn't avenge evil. Light knows light and only light. God is conscious of Himself and all that He manifests. Nothing is real or permanent outside of God and the infinite manifestation of His goodness.

God is All, and that allness is the exterminator of anything unlike good. Just as light eliminates darkness through it's simple presence, eliminating moral and physical darkness isn't an act of destruction for divine Good; it's an act of simply being God.

So where did the darkness come from if it isn't part of God's allness? Darkness is a false perspective; it's not a thing, it's the suggestion of an absence of light.

Darkness is often self-imposed. Take my cat, for example. She loves light, even seeking it out. But she also closes her eyes tightly when the sun is shining on her. The light doesn't disappear, and she can't avoid its effects; but the darkness she experiences may seem very real to her with her eyes closed to it.

If one is duped into believing that God is distant, that good is far off, that good can be subverted and changed into its opposite, or that one is not good as God's image, he is holding a false view of the divine Light  in and around him.

Sin is Bible vocabulary for negativity, for evil thoughts and deeds.The Bible teaches that sin is punished. It also teaches that man is redeemable from sin. Christ Jesus illustrated this redemption by forgiving and turning people's hearts from sin. Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures points out one of the basic tenets of Christian Science: "We acknowledge God’s forgiveness of sin in the destruction of sin and the spiritual understanding that casts out evil as unreal. But the belief in sin is punished so long as the belief lasts." (Mary Baker Eddy, p. 497)

It is important to note that God doesn't do the punishing. A sin belief punishes itself. Sin is self-destructive. The belief punishes itself, induces suffering on itself, until the belief is released.  "Vengeance is mine" is an attempt to to explain this phenomena of self-destructive evil by blaming the discomfort on a human-like and angry god.

To the question of "people like that," whether they will ultimately be redeemed, it is important to note that mortals don't become children of God. Mortality and its conditions of evil passions and appetites, depraved will, cruelty, hatred, revenge, have no life in them to redeem.

If there is not a single morsel of morality - some slight indication of humanity, honesty, affection, compassion, hope, faith, meekness or temperance in a Hitler, than that Hitler was never a man. (Man, in this sense, is the generic term for manifestation or child of God.) In such a case he would be classified, and would always remain, a figment of what Christian Science denotes as animal magnetism, the anti-Christ, generic evil, or complete darkness. However, If there is any slight indication of humanity there - whether we have personally ever seen it or not - that makes him redeemable.

Fortunately, we don't have to worry about if or how a Hitler is or isn't transformed or changed. Whether man or a figment of animal magnetism, the divine and irrevocable law of progress will sort out the true facts, redeem the real and wipe out entirely that which is unlike God.

Darkness never wins in a contest with Light. Light, and the good that constitutes God and His creation, conquers all.

For those who are in northern California, I will give my lecture "Finding God, Finding Health" this afternoon, at 4pm PT in Pacifica. I will be back to blogging next week, but in the meantime lots of interesting ideas are percolating to share.

Here is the November 8, 2012, Daily Lift, entitled "Dump the Guilt", in case you missed it. The Daily Lift is a podcast series featuring the inspiration of members of the worldwide Christian Science Board of Lectureship team. Every Lift is "the best Lift I have ever heard." If you are up for a two-minute inspiration and thought-boost, do give the Lift a regular listen. New Lifts are posted five days a week. You can even subscribe to have each new Lift delivered to your email inbox.

Happy weekend to all!

A blog reader sent me the link to this 10 minute sermon given last Sunday by Nadia Bolz-Weber at her church, House for All Sinners and Saints, in Denver, Colorado, where she is the founding pastor. She makes some really helpful points, so I am passing it along to you as the Prayer MOJO post for this week. I recommend that you listen to, rather than read, her message, because preaching is a spoken art form.

To hear her sermon, be sure your speakers are on, and click the button:

"A couple hours ago on Facebook, Catherine posted that she had just seen a snake on her hike. As her pastor I thought it best to reply, “If it starts talking, don’t listen.”

"This likely came to mind since I was editing this very sermon about Adam and Eve. The story of the Garden of Eden is what is called an origin story and every culture has theirs. Origin stories tell us how the world came about and where we came from and other important things like why snakes don’t have legs. We think we might know our origin story really well, but in the Genesis account of the Garden of Eden, there actually is no mention of sin, or a fall, or Satan, or temptation, and I hate to break it to you but there wasn’t even an apple involved. Which means the cultural understanding of the story of the Garden of Eden is slightly corrupted. This is due in part to the countless paintings throughout the history of Western art which for some reason portray a tree and a snake and an extremely white Adam and Eve holding a Red Delicious.

"See, for generations folks have called the tale of Adam and Eve and the serpent and the forbidden fruit “The Fall from grace” or “The story of Original Sin."

"That's a little weird to me. Like, God created the heavens and the Earth and animals and it was like, this awesome all-inclusive primeval club-med for Adam and Eve – they ran naked through the warm sunlight of an idyllic paradise and everything was theirs for the taking – except for that one tree that they were told to steer clear of. And this absolute paradise in the garden between God and Humanity lasted approximately 20 minutes. Until Eve had a chat with a talking snake and then disobeyed God and ate the forbidden fruit. And because Eve, ate some fruit she was told not to, now all of humanity is cursed and this so-called original sin of Eve’s became sort of like a sexually transmitted disease.

"Because now, according to this version of what the story is about, every person born after that inherited original sin from Eve. That’s right. Eve messed it up for everyone by eating some piece of fruit God told her not to. Which feels kinda unfair to her and kinda unfair to us. But this is what we are told the story is about.

"See, religion has taught many of us that the story of Adam and Eve is a story primarily about their disobedience. And that the fracture in the relationship between God and humanity is caused by us breaking God’s arbitrary little rules. So it feels like maybe religion was established just so we could be certain about what rules we need to follow in order for our relationship with God to be a loving, peaceful one.

"But this week, after reflecting on several conversations I’ve had with many of you about your lives and identities and the struggles we all have to hear the truth of who we are, well, I started to wonder if the real damage to the relationship between Adam and Eve and God wasn’t the rule breaking nearly as much as it was in allowing themselves to believe lies about themselves and God. See, the serpent lied to them about who they were and who God was and like all the most dangerous lies, these lies the serpent told were just close enough to the truth to be really destructive...." Find full sermon.