Have you ever thought about God as the author of your life? Mary Baker Eddy writes in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, “Those instructed in Christian Science have reached the glorious perception that God is the only author of man” (p. 29).
Think of the implications of that wonderful idea! If God is the only Life, the only author of us, and total, absolute good, then we, as the reflection of God, must be totally good. Everything God is, we express, because we are His expression, or image. Our identity is as perfect as the divine source of our identity. Since God, Spirit, is the author of our spiritual selfhood, we are created and continuously maintained as harmonious, whole, and perfect because God knows only perfection.
In actuality we have no birth and no human parentage because our origin is in God, our true Father and Mother. We have no unattractive personality traits because God knows no personalities, but only lovely, spiritual individualities. Because God is our author, our creator, what He knows of our spiritual identity stands alone. There are no other competing narratives about us. Our identity is never determined by DNA, random circumstances, human parents, a spouse, or anyone else, but only by God, divine intelligence.
As God’s ideas, we are the exact image and likeness of God. Our lives are the continuous unfoldment of our spiritual identity—they express love and joy—because we reflect divine Life and Love. Each one of us has a unique, divine purpose, continuously being revealed, and that purpose has a perpetually harmonious outcome, which continues eternally.
As we trust that God, Spirit, is the author of our existence, we can expect to lead blessed, rewarding lives.
It isn’t up to us to determine our purpose, nor do we need to try to order the events and activities in our lives in the way we want them to be. We can recognize our oneness with God and accept the blessings this brings. Mrs. Eddy tells us in Science and Health: “Mortals are egotists. They believe themselves to be independent workers, personal authors, and even privileged originators of something which Deity would not or could not create” (p. 263). Giving up personal authorship of our lives, giving up personal, human will, brings freedom and peace. We do this as we accept God, good, as our only author, rather than chance, heredity, or human history.
Maybe our life at present doesn’t look like any of this. We may be anxious about the future, stuck in a rut, haunted by the past, challenged by an illness, living in an unhappy marriage, dealing with unemployment. However, the Bible says that “God is not the author of confusion, but of peace” (I Corinthians 14:33), and Science and Health tells us that “God is not the author of mortal discords” (p. 231). So where do such discords come from? They come from a mistaken sense of our origin—a mistaken sense that we are mortal. We can rise above this mistaken view and let God guide us into harmony, progress, health, and happiness, through the understanding that life is spiritual and immortal, not material and mortal.
I can recall times in my life when I felt as if things weren’t going the way I wished. I felt disappointed with my accomplishments, discouraged by unfulfilled goals, rejected by those I loved, and without clear direction. To add to the list, I had several physical problems that weren’t being healed. I finally chose to dig deeper spiritually, to understand my spiritual identity, and to better understand God as the author and originator of my selfhood and life.
As I continued to explore the truth of my spiritual individuality through studying the Bible and Mrs. Eddy’s writings, and as I prayed about my spiritual purpose, I began to see light and progress. My life stabilized and harmonized. My relationships grew richer and more meaningful. My body was healed. And my purpose in life became crystal clear: It was to love God more actively and to express my love for God’s children more fully by learning how to serve God as a healer—as a Christian Science practitioner. As this pursuit became my priority, my life moved forward in wonderful ways I never could have imagined possible.
As we trust that God, Spirit, is the author of our existence, we can expect to lead blessed, rewarding lives. We can listen to God, Mind, to guide and direct us, to give us courage and strength, to reveal our perfect, whole, complete nature as the expression of divinity. We can discover more about who we are as God’s loved child, and see that with God as our author, our lives are joy-filled, full of the goodness of God that never ends.
