Chapter Six: Do You Demand Difficulties?

The stars come nightly to the shy;
   The tidal wave unto the sea;
Nor time, nor space, nor deep, nor high,
   Can keep my own away from me.

      —John Burroughs.

IN A CERTAIN turbulent household, affairs periodically reached a critical state. It was a household dominated by a loving, nervous, and—though she did not realize it—selfish mother. Under her anxious, loving care first one member of the family, then another, and perhaps then several members, would become embroiled in problems. Things usually reached a climax with everybody's nerves on edge, and with the mother's weeping, "Well, I've done all I can. I'll have to leave the rest to God." Then the tension would begin to relax, things would approach an adjustment, and before long the whole process would be repeated.

This dear mother had a genius for stirring up things in an effort to improve them. The worse things were, the more desperate became her state of mind. The more perturbed she was, the worse things became. It was a vicious circle, which was broken only when her strong spirit weakened and could stand no more. By her attitude of mind she demanded difficulties. She could approach God consciously in no other way.

Page 56

Presumably she put off praying to God as long as possible, as if to invoke His action were an admission of weakness or an invitation to calamity. Yet never was she so strong and poised as when, having asked divine aid, she calmly executed the good judgment that had slumbered beneath her turbulence; and never did things go so smoothly and so well as in such periodic extremities.

Only dire difficulties for herself and those whom she loved could evoke her faith and through it the benediction of the Presence.

Righteous, loving in the last degree, she yielded herself to happiness and peace only after the bitterest of struggles, and those against a phantom enemy!

She was like the man who insisted on helping a friend during a moving process. A great van was drawn up before the door of the house and men were busy going to and fro between house and van, carrying furniture. The man started in to help, and, when his friend sought to dissuade him, would wave him aside, and pitch in all the harder. At last the friend overtook him, pinned him in a corner, and said, "If you don't stop helping us, we'll never get moved in!"

"Moved in!" cried the well-meaning one. "I thought you were moving out!"

Like the unhappy youth who ran the wrong way in a football game, we often have to be literally knocked down and dragged out before we can be stopped from working against our own best interests. We demand difficulties.

Page 57

Our world is so topsy-turvy that it must be turned upside down to put it right side up.

There is no point in praying to a God who knows no more than we; and if we concede that God does know more than we know, why should we turn to Him so belatedly, and with such fear in our heart that He will take from us what we desire?

Thus do we postpone our good and demand trouble in many ways. For instance, the person who, having good physical health and comfortable financial circumstances, says to himself that spiritual things, religion, and so on, are only for "weak sisters" and that there's plenty of time for such things when he is "old and full of qualms," is inviting age and qualms, with the added disadvantage of having no spiritual reserve with which to meet them.

Booth Tarkington, in one of his stories, tells of such a man who, in middle age, unexpectedly passed out of the body. He had given the years of his life to amassing a material fortune and to gratifying his physical desires. He had found neither time nor desire to enrich his inner life. Death suddenly snatched from him the one means, his body, by which he could gratify the desires that he had built up through years of intensive effort. Thrust into a less material world, where the things of the body have small place, he was as a man bereft. He had no means of communication with the world about him.

By his mode of living, such a man demands

Page 58

difficulties. He closes all avenues of spiritual help until, crushed and defeated by his self-imposed burdens, he at last turns to the God of refuge.

The last two decades have seen many a business man's business swept aside in the ongoing march of progress by his insistence on difficulties. Ideas, perfectly good and decidedly helpful as a foundation for a business of twenty years ago, may be obsolete today. The man who says, "The ideas and methods that were good enough for my father are good enough for me," is demanding difficulties. He is trying to live in two ages at once, the past and the present. So long as his income does not suffer too greatly he is likely to resist change. Even when his income does suffer, he may refuse to admit the true reason; but unless he swings into line with modern ideas and methods he will find his way a hard one.

Persons in creative work often declare that they can stir up no enthusiasm for a task until the time is at hand for the task to be completed. Schoolboys put off their studying over the weekend until the last thing Sunday night or early Monday morning. Writers put off inditing their story until the "dead line" is upon them. Composers—and one in particular confesses to this— have been known to rush the score of an overture to the musicians with the ink still wet on the manuscript. All these are ways of demanding difficulties.

A woman, with whom housekeeping was a mere item among many demands that crowded

Page 59

her days, was complimented upon the immaculate order of her house.

"I don't deserve any credit for that," she countered.

"Why not?" she was asked.

"It is easier to keep it in order than it is to straighten it up after the rooms are badly disarranged," she explained smilingly. She had learned not to demand difficulties.

So, too, it is easier to keep our life in order than it is to put it back in order after we have invited difficulties; but it is never too late to invoke and to receive divine aid, whatever our need.

God does not demand that we suffer for our mistakes. He is not a revengeful tyrant, a Shylock demanding his pound of flesh. He is a loving, all-wise Father, who rejoices to share His good with us; but it is contrary to His good will that we shall miss the blessings that He has for us, and consequently we cannot happily continue in mistakes that would defeat His will. However, He does not demand that we suffer in order to pay for making mistakes. Making a mistake is its own punishment.

God demands only that we learn the lesson that our mistake contains for us. Once we have learned the lesson, we are no longer in bondage to God's law. We are, then, to "go ... sin no more." We are free in the sight of God. Our further bondage, if it seems to continue, is a bondage to our own ideas of retribution. We flee where none pursues us. We hold ourselves to hardships that

Page 60

none other than ourselves demands. We demand difficulties. We say, "I have done wrong, and I will pay for my wrongdoing." When something evil impends we may find ourselves accepting it as a retribution for past misdeeds. We say again, "I want to pay for the wrongs that I have done; I want to pay as rapidly as I can, and have it over."

In such shadowed ways do we condemn ourselves, and sometimes others too, to suffering. In such ways do we use the fine energies of God within us in expiating sins that in God's dear sight have ceased to be. There is a better way.

That better way is to glorify God by dedicating our powers to Him. Better than to die for God is to live for God. Better than to punish ourselves is to help others. Better than to condemn our mind and body for wrongdoing is to center all our activities on creative, constructive helpfulness.

God never holds any one under condemnation. In God's sight each one of us is always His beloved son; we have never ceased to be such, and never will cease to be.

God does not love us merely when we are good, wise, and prosperous. He loves us equally well when we have done wrong and have been foolish, and are poor and unwell in consequence. If there can be any change in the heart of God, surely it would be one of added love and compassion for those of His children who, by the mistakes of their acts and thoughts, have brought into their lives the dark shadows of unhappy things.

Page 61

By this we do not mean to condone wrongdoing. There is a silent monitor within us all that would not permit us to do this, even if we should want to do so.

If we turn from the light, our being in darkness is sufficient punishment without our having to suffer the mental anguish of self-condemnation or of the belief that God condemns us because we have turned from the light.

Evil thoughts and acts are their own punishment. They are the denial, at least for a time, of the blessings that they displace. That is the punishment of evil, a punishment that, as we all can testify, is quite sufficient in itself without adding to it a sense of having "fallen from grace," and of carrying about with us an inner conviction of uncleanness.

If, already, you can see that something that you have thought, said, or done is wrong, then by that clearer vision you indicate that you have already passed beyond the evil toward something better. The evil would not seem evil to you unless you had already embraced an ideal of something better. Do not, then, live the evil of the past over and over again by giving it the weight of your negative, condemning thought.

However, let not the unwary Truth student think that he need only repeat affirmations and all his difficulties will thereby be magically at an end. The way of Truth is a way of joy, but it is a way to be traveled. It is not for idlers and dilettantes.

Page 62

The study and application of practical Christianity is the greatest form of protection against adversity that can be had, but paradoxically such study often seems to invite problems. The secret of the paradox is that there are two kinds of problems.

There are problems that result from mistaken thought and action. These are the saddest problems of the world, and against these, happily, Truth is indeed a protection, when the student actually conforms his life to right thought and action.

There are also problems that result not from a wrong attitude toward life, but from the necessity of growth. The unfoldment of good to us frequently presents problems that seem as difficult as any that life can offer, but they are blessings not understood. Against them there is no insurance but faith. Knowing Truth, we must be steadfast and undismayed, realizing that if we are true to principle we shall prosper, even though we cannot see how. "They shall prosper that love thee," is the Psalmist's assurance, and this promise will be fulfilled for us if only we remain stanch in the faith. By faith these problems of growth are solved.

Plato spoke of two kinds of blindness that affect men, the blindness of going from light into darkness, and the blindness of coming from darkness into light. The problems that the faithful Truth student is most likely to encounter are those that accompany the coming into light. Were

Page 63

we to see them with the full vision of Spirit, we should know them to be no problems at all.

The two kinds of blindness seem almost alike to outward sense, yet they are as different as night and day. The blindness that follows one's turning from light to darkness passes, to leave the sight weak and growing weaker; but the blindness of one emerging from darkness into light is followed by growing strength of sight.

So it is that, as the children of the light come through the changes that characterize growth in Truth, they find, in every problem that appears, an opportunity to discover the application of Spirit's power. Alarm and distress give way to faith and courage, and these ongoers come to know the strength and support of "the everlasting arms."

What is important to us, as we grow in our understanding of the message of the Great Teacher, is not where we are or what our seeming limitations are, but how far we have come and in what direction we are traveling. Despite adverse appearances, we are justified in saying and knowing that all is well and shall be proved so, if our direction is right.

Once, at a large gathering of Truth students, there were among those on the speaker's platform three women, all of very generous physical proportions, and one of them, the chairman, carrying a lorgnette. Questions from members of the audience had been invited, and among those sent up to be answered was the following:

Page 64

If I understand correctly, you teach a doctrine of enduring youth and beauty, and the overcoming of physical ills. Why is it, then, that the three women speakers on your platform all are overweight, and one of them wears glasses?

The question was read aloud by the woman with the lorgnette. There was a moment of painful silence, and then her peal of merry laughter broke the tension, and she said gayly, "If you think that I am large now, you should have seen me before I began to study Truth!"

Her point was well taken. True, we all have the right to expect that those who teach Truth shall demonstrate what they teach, but few persons there are in the world who have completed their work of regeneration. Indeed, as that work is completed, is it not logical to believe that, like Jesus Christ, when His work was finished, such overcomers will disappear to carnal sense, and dwell in their glorified bodies in that same realm of light that He inhabits? As to teachers' demonstrating their principles, the better one comes to know them the more one will realize how very much most of them have overcome. Truly, in many cases, "these are they that come out of . . . great tribulation . . . Therefore are they before the throne of God; and they serve him day and night in his temple."

We cannot judge any one rightfully by appearances. We must first know how far he has come, and what way he is trending. This truth was first brought home to the writer

Page 65

in telling fashion when, one time, a man from the underworld of a great city came to his study for help. The visitor was a habitual drunkard, and his appearance betrayed his background of sordid living in other ways as well. Somehow a copy of one of the Unity publications had come to his hand, he had found the address of our center in it, and had come to ask for help.

His eagerness to know and to accept Truth was most touching. It brought to mind the exclamation that Christ used in referring to a humble student of His time: "I say unto you, I have not found so great faith, no, not in Israel."

For the first few weeks his visits were characterized by a consistently intoxicated condition; then gradually be began to find self-mastery. One day, as he entered my office, I sensed a difference in him. His walk was firmer. The carriage of his head was more erect. He was smiling brightly.

"I know you have good news for me!" I exclaimed.

"Yes, indeed I have," he answered quickly. "Out with it!"

With an air of pardonable pride he responded, "I get drunk only once a week now!"

I was disappointed. I betrayed my youth in that disappointment. I was trying to judge him by a standard of my own. Afterward I would have given much to erase forever from my mind the sense of disappointment in what to another was indeed a triumph. It was doubtful, I thought to myself later on, if in all my lifetime I had come

Page 66

as far as had that man in a few short weeks.

What high adventure we embrace as we begin to grow in Truth; as we leave behind the "old man" with his sinning that demands difficulties, and take on the new man in Christ that demands nothing and rejoices to know that his life is safely held in the hands of the Father! For the Father, by His loving grace, transforms every problem into an opportunity, reveals every opportunity to be a blessing.

No material wealth is so great an evidence of prosperity as is the calm and steadfast assurance that problems are but growing pains, that God, who has brought us so far along the path, will not desert us midway, and that in His high service all things work together for good. We cease to demand difficulties as we begin to travel the upward way of overcoming, the upward way to God.