IS anything more essential today than a clear understanding of one's identity?
Christ Jesus yearned for his identity to be recognized and understood. He asked his disciples (Matt. 16:13), "Whom do men say that I the Son of man am?" The disciples answered, "Some say that thou art John the Baptist: some, Elias; and others, Jeremias, or one of the prophets." Not satisfied with this answer, Jesus put the question more directly in a slightly different form: "But whom say ye that I am?" Simon Peter replied, "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God." Christ Jesus not only approved of Simon's identification of him but declared that here was a revelation, not of mere mortal origin but directly from the Father.
The importance of understanding one's own spiritual identity becomes clearer as one contemplates the words of Mary Baker Eddy in "Miscellaneous Writings" (p. 185), "Self-renunciation of all that constitutes a so-called material man, and the acknowledgment and achievement of his spiritual identity as the child of God, is Science that opens the very flood-gates of heaven; whence good flows into every avenue of being, cleansing mortals of all uncleanness, destroying all suffering, and demonstrating the true image and likeness."
