Recently I have been exploring the concept of our God-given innocence. Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, has a beautiful poem that begins “Shepherd show me how to go …” (“ ‘Feed My Sheep,’ ” Poems, p. 14). This was my prayer when searching for how to see everyone around me as God’s man. I wanted to be open to God’s view of man and to be able to mentally place the individuals in my life and those I hear about in the news in their correct category as God’s children. The last line of the poem came to me as my answer: “Shepherd, wash them clean.” I understood that God’s child is eternally pure, and that God is responsible for His children’s purity. They are innocent of the ugly labels the world wants to attach to them. We all are.
The opportunity to use these concepts materialized one day in the form of a wild spinner dolphin. She would approach swimmers and rub against them. This was very unusual behavior for a wild dolphin. I had enjoyed extraordinary experiences with these intelligent creatures over the years but had never before touched one. I first saw this dolphin rubbing herself through the legs of another swimmer; then she came and rubbed herself on my legs and arms. I called her “Cuddles,” although other swimmers thought that she was trying to scratch what looked like a disease on her skin. The county posted a sign at the pier warning swimmers to watch out for a dolphin with a skin condition. The next day a friend said that Cuddles’ state had worsened and predicted: “She is not long for this world. You know that we cannot save them all.”
God’s child is eternally pure, and God is responsible for His children’s purity.
I did not accept her judgment. My thought was that Cuddles had swum to people for comfort and help. Coincidentally, the day I ran into Cuddles, I developed a circle on my ankle that was red and very itchy. I thought: “Fine. Cuddles and I are both God’s pure expressions. I will work to clear this up for both of us.” I understood that as an expression of God, Cuddles was innocent. We were not victims. Suggestions of contagion could not create an annoyance or threaten our true being, which is unreachable by material sickness because we are created by God. We are perfect because God is perfect.
I supported my prayer by reading some testimonies in the Christian Science Sentinel to turn my thought to the truth because, at times, my ankle still seemed inflamed or painful. One testifier told of her need to do mental housecleaning. She had given prayerful thought to past experiences that were still bothering her, and they were healed. Were past experiences still bothering me? I asked myself, “Have I really forgiven my husband for his abusive actions toward me?”
My decision had been to persevere in the relationship others might have left, so it could be healed from within. I did see the relationship healed. Before he passed on suddenly, our last times together had been completely loving and peaceful. In praying to overcome my grief, I realized that in God’s creation, all that had ever happened between us was His perfect harmony and that God eternally expresses His love, creativity, joy, and intelligence in each of us. I thought I had forgiven my husband’s past abusive behavior, but now I felt there was more to do. I needed to cleanse my thinking completely.
I wrote a poem about the experience, but found that the things I wrote still hurt me. At this point I started scratching the sore on my ankle because it bothered me even more. I left the poem and thought, “Am I doing a mental housecleaning for healing or just figuratively ‘scratching error’ (the negative human thoughts I was holding on to) as I had scratched my ankle?” I knew from my study of Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures and the Bible that being distracted by error is of no benefit. This is just giving in to mortal mind’s attempt to make a reality of something that is no part of God’s creation.
Mrs. Eddy describes the need to turn our thought to Truth. In Science and Health, she says: “If we look to the body for pleasure, we find pain; for Life, we find death; for Truth, we find error; for Spirit, we find its opposite, matter. Now reverse this action. Look away from the body into Truth and Love, the Principle of all happiness, harmony, and immortality. Hold thought steadfastly to the enduring, the good, and the true, and you will bring these into your experience proportionably to their occupancy of your thoughts” (pp. 260–261). When I was holding my thought to the harm I had experienced, I was unable to see happiness and harmony.
I remembered the story in the New Testament where we are told of Christ Jesus’ response when an adulterous woman was brought to him. There was no question of her human guilt, and Jesus was asked to pass judgment on her. When pressed, Jesus challenged the group by saying that whoever was without sin could stone her. The accusers left, and Jesus told the woman, “Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more” (John 8:11). The dictionary says that to condemn means to assign guilt, which Jesus didn’t do. He saw the woman’s true innocence. Mrs. Eddy tells us “Jesus beheld in Science the perfect man, who appeared to him where sinning mortal man appears to mortals” (Science and Health, pp. 476–477). To follow Jesus’ example, I needed to be able to see my husband as the God-created man, always perfect, not as someone capable of inflicting harm.
God sees us all as the perfect reflection of Himself.
This was the answer to my search. I had wanted to grow into full forgiveness for my husband, to see him as he truly is. What came to my thought was, “He is innocent. In God’s eyes, he exists as God’s pure and perfect child.” In the Bible we read, “And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.” Can the image of God be guilty of abusing others? We also know that “God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good” (Genesis 1:26, 31). Very good includes innocence. God sees us all as the perfect reflection of Himself, thus pure.
As Mrs. Eddy states: “When speaking of God’s children, not the children of men, Jesus said, ‘The kingdom of God is within you;’ that is, Truth and Love reign in the real man, showing that man in God’s image is unfallen and eternal” (Science and Health, p. 476). I could see my husband as the “man in God’s image.” He was unfallen and innocent. Also in Science and Health: “The great truth in the Science of being, that the real man was, is, and ever shall be perfect, is incontrovertible; for if man is the image, reflection, of God, he is neither inverted nor subverted, but upright and Godlike” (p. 200).
Understanding that my husband’s identity was never subverted but that he had always in reality been God’s reflection freed me from any sense that he could have physically or emotionally abused me. I also saw that I had never been a victim; I was always perfect, continually cared for by God’s love. There was nothing to forgive. All of us were, are now, and ever will be, God’s expression and residents in His universe.
My thought was healed. I had taken the step of full forgiveness to the understanding of my husband’s God-given innocence.
Without specifically thinking about it, I had worked through the suggestion that Cuddles or I could be victims of a skin condition. The itchy ankle ceased to have any place in my thought, and all evidence of it soon disappeared. A few days after this change of thought, a friend said that, while swimming, he had seen Cuddles. She was leading the pod and the evidence of the skin lesions was gone. “She was not a sick dolphin,” my friend concluded. That is true—Cuddles, my husband, and I are all innocent, pure, and free.
