Not Just Right, But The Highest Right

If we are not watchful we can easily find ourselves on the wrong road, like Janet Leigh in Psycho. These wrong roads seldom lead us to anything like the Bates Motel, they are not evil roads, but they are not the highest right road. The road passing by the Bates Motel was on the old highway and would have led her to her destination as surely as the new highway, but drifting inattentively onto the old highway proved fateful.

There is nothing wrong with striving for honesty, affection, compassion, hope, faith, and meekness (see S&H 115:26-27), but are they really the road we should be diligently pursuing? Mrs. Eddy defines these qualities as "moral" and "Evil beliefs disappearing".

The Student's Dictionary referred to in an earlier entry defines moral in part as: "Relating to the practice, manners, or conduct of men, as social beings, in relation to each other, and with reference to right and wrong." So although there is certainly nothing wrong with these moral qualities, they do not represent our highest ultimate goal, which Mrs. Eddy gives in S&H 116:1-3.

We need to watch and pray that we are ever alert and searching for the right road, narrow though it may be, and that we do not get fooled into settling into a pleasant self-satisfaction for having achieved some mastery of the moral qualities. Moral qualities alone, such as "humanity", can still leave open the possibility for thought to wander onto the old highway and turn into a harmless looking Bates Motel.

We cannot ever afford to relax our vigilance while we are still dealing with anything, no matter how benign seeming, in the mortal, human realm. Temperance, for example, denies that we succumb to excess in the human. Holiness denies the presence and reality of the human altogether. When holiness is achieved there will be no wrong road to take and no Bates Motel to await us.