My good friend, Phil Davis, C.S.B., recently posted two items on his blog site: “Kick the bucket list!” and “…And then there are ice buckets!” I highly recommend clicking on the highlighted titles and reading them!

Well, there’s another type of bucket list that recently came to my attention. One that’s perhaps is even subtler and yet one that’s at least equally dangerous.

What is it?

“What goals of spiritual progress do I need to make before I pass on?

Now, you may be thinking “What’s wrong with that? It’s good to make spiritual progress? After all, Mrs. Eddy stated that ‘Earth’s preparatory school must be improved to the utmost.’ (Science and Health, p. 486)”

Actually, everything’s wrong with that kind of thinking!

First of all, it’s not the same thing that Mrs. Eddy was talking about in the above quote—about the need to continually be improving our thoughts and actions to be more God-like.

No, instead it’s a subtle whisper of the serpent—of error—donning the trappings of a desire for spiritual progress, but which in reality is having us agree to be thinking about death as a goalpost rather than persistently and vigorously resisting death/mortality in any of its myriad guises!

Remember, the Apostle Paul referred to “death” as “the last enemy” to be destroyed (I Corinthians 15:26). Does that in any way sound like we should be accepting it as normal or inevitable or something to be spiritually planned for?

Now, let me be direct here: by thinking about a checklist of spiritually progressive tasks we must accomplish before we pass on, we are in fact agreeing to death! We are agreeing to the belief that we are mortal beings rather than the immortal ideas of God.

And, make no mistake; by doing so, we are bringing the woes of material sense—of sin, sickness, and death—upon us.

Clearly, this is not a good thing!

And it certainly isn’t spiritual progress!

Science and Health (p. 318) states:

The material senses originate and support all that is material, untrue, selfish, or debased. They would put soul into soil, life into limbo, and doom all things to decay. We must silence this lie of material sense with the truth of spiritual sense. We must cause the error to cease that brought the belief of sin and death and would efface the pure sense of omnipotence.

So, let’s get about doing what we must and need to be doing: silencing the lie that material sense—that error—is seeking to overwhelm us as well as humanity with: the lie of death.

Let’s make sure that the only bucket we want to partake of is the one that our Master spoke of to the woman of Samaria. The bucket that contains the living waters of life eternal—of the truths of Christian Science—right now!