Christian Science frees us from servitude to a physical body. When Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, grasped the spiritual significance of the fact that God created man in His own image, she saw that since an image reflects its original, man's identity is spiritual and eternal.
A physical body cannot be the image, the reflection, of the eternal God. When one sees what a physical body really is—a counterfeit, not a reflection of God—he can reject the counterfeit and claim his spiritual selfhood as a child of God. Mary Baker Eddy writes in the textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 368), "That Life is not contingent on bodily conditions is proved, when we learn that life and man survive this body."
The Apostle Paul understood man's relationship to God. He said (Acts 17:28), "In him we live, and move, and have our being." The statement would be meaningless if man were not wholly a spiritual creation, if he were not fed, clothed, and supplied spiritually, a being quite apart from the physical body we call man. As long as we are conscious of the physical body, we shall give it the reasonable care we think it needs. Freedom from its demands will not be achieved in a moment. This freedom comes by degrees. Only by continuous spiritual growth can we become fully aware of our spiritual embodiment. One glimpse of the truth, however, is often enough to meet an immediate human need.
