As we view our world today, what conclusion do we draw as to humanity's greatest and imperative need? In this age of scientific discovery old systems of human thought are being challenged, and the cherished beliefs of centuries are being called into question and discarded. This is true not only in the realm of the natural sciences but also in the realm of theology. Human misconceptions of Deity are being discarded, and prominent theologians are saying that the God of our fathers is dead.
May it not be that the human misconceptions of Deity never had life! The God of wrath and retributive punishment, the God who creates both good and evil— the God who creates man and the universe and who is also the destroyer of His own creation, the God of life and of death, the God of love and of hate, fear, lust, greed, and malice, the God made in the image and likeness of humanity, the God of anthropomorphism—never has had life. This human concept of Deity, which has appeared in various guises and has held humanity in bondage through fear, ignorance, and superstition, is no longer accepted widely as a true concept of God.
Ever since Moses' pronouncement, "The Lord our God is one Lord,"Deut. 6:4; there has been emerging in human thought a higher, clearer concept of God. We can trace the emergence of this higher spiritual concept of God through the writings of the Hebrew prophets—a concept of God as one universal, divine ideal, a concept of God that is to be loved as well as worshiped.
Jacob and Moses glimpsed this true idea of God. When through spiritual enlightenment Jacob's fear of his brother was dispelled, he said to Esau, "I have seen thy face, as though I had seen the face of God."Gen. 33:10; Here was a glimpse of the practical nature of a divine Love that heals the discord and inharmony, the enmity between men.
Moses saw God as a universal Lawgiver and gave to his people practical rules for the demonstration of the one, universal God who was to be loved with all their heart and soul and mind. Mankind were commanded to discard jealousy and envy and hate and to love God supremely and their neighbor as themselves.
Habakkuk saw God as "of purer eyes than to behold evil,"Hab. 1:13; a God who could not look on iniquity. So gradually there emerged a higher concept of Deity until, through Christ Jesus, God was revealed to be the universal Father of all. Jesus saw man as the perfect reflection of the true God, as the beloved son of a loving Father. He named God "Our Father which art in heaven,"Matt. 6:9; and he defined the kingdom of heaven not as a locality in space but as the spiritual understanding of God that is already within us, within real consciousness.
Jesus taught and demonstrated that the spiritual idea of God as the loving Father of all, when understood, disposes of the ills of humanity. With this understanding of God that came to him through the Christ, which reveals the truth of God and man, Jesus healed sin, disease, lack, limitation, and even overcame death for others as well as for himself. The Master taught and demonstrated the true idea of God as Spirit, divine Love.
John, the beloved disciple, who was with Jesus throughout three years of his public ministry as the Teacher and demonstrator of this true and clearest idea of God, wrote, "God is love."I John 4:8; John implies that we are to worship God through reflecting the Love which is God and by loving our neighbor as ourself.
These are the words of John: "Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love."
Had this true and clearest idea of God as infinite, omnipresent, omnipotent divine Love been understood and proved in the daily experience of humanity, how different our world would be today!
In the Sermon on the Mount, Christ Jesus gives us many practical rules for living and demonstrating God as divine Love, the Father of all. But mankind has not made this teaching practical. The teachings and practice of Christ Jesus and his disciples were overshadowed in human consciousness by the older, more prevalent false systems of theology, with their misconceptions of Deity as a God of love and of hate, of life and of death, of truth and of error, of harmony and of disaster.
Although professing Christianity, humanity has not followed the teachings of Christ Jesus or made them wholly practical in daily living. False conceptions of Deity still prevalent rule the lives of men, for they are still inherent in human consciousness, though today they are being challenged.
These misconceptions of the true idea of God, with their basic human idolatry, supplanted the teachings of Christ Jesus, even in the so-called Christian world. Christianity as taught and demonstrated by the Master largely disappeared from human thought until the discovery of Christian Science in 1866 by Mary Baker Eddy and her subsequent founding of it. Following her healing, through prayer alone, she searched the Scriptures to learn the basis of Jesus' teaching and healing works. She discerned that the God whom Jesus depicted was not a God of dualism, of good and of evil, but a God who had created man and the universe wholly good, in His own image, in His own likeness. She saw that this God, who is infinite, omnipresent Love, did not send disease or disaster upon His perfect creature, man. Having made man in His own image and likeness, the image and likeness of divine Love, God created man incapable of including or experiencing sin, disease, or death.
Mrs. Eddy saw that the basis of Christ Jesus' healing works was his clear realization that evil is not a God-created power, but that evil, in whatever guise it presented itself, is a lie and the father of lies, as Jesus defined it. She saw that omnipotence, all-power, belongs to God, infinite, omnipresent divine Love. She saw that the understanding of God as infinite, as the only presence and the only power, dispels the illusion that there is another presence or another power. Mrs. Eddy discerned that the dualism which claims that there is a God who creates and knows both good and evil is a misconception of Deity, a misconception that accounts for the ills with which humanity has been plagued through the centuries.
As Mrs. Eddy came to understand this truly scientific Christianity which God, divine Mind, revealed to her, she was able to repeat many of the healing works of Jesus. She saw that the repetition of these works, through the realization of the ever-present Christ as revealed in Christian Science, was the result of the eternal presence of divine Love understood and proved to be All-in-all, here and now.
In the Christian Science textbook, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, Mrs. Eddy says, "In divine Science, we have not as much authority for considering God masculine, as we have for considering Him feminine, for Love imparts the clearest idea of Deity."Science and Health, p. 517; This true spiritual idea of God as divine Love, the Father and Mother of all, the only cause and creator of man and the universe, needs to be understood and lived in our daily experience.
The healing power of divine Love as understood and demonstrated by Christ Jesus and by Mrs. Eddy heals instantaneously the most inveterate diseases. It cleanses the human consciousness of sin and sensuality, eliminates greed, lust, malice, jealousy, hatred, and fear from human thinking, and so heals the ills of the flesh stemming from these errors.
As one comes to understand the concept of God as all-inclusive, divine Love, he finds only good being expressed in his daily experience. He manifests a higher sense of health and harmony, of substance and supply, of happiness and well-being. Realizing that man reflects divine Love, he finds this truth effective in maintaining harmonious relationships with others—at home, at business, at church.
Some years ago a dear friend told me of the following experience. He had been suffering from a severe illness. Being a student of Christian Science, he had applied his understanding of this Science, he felt, to the very best of his ability but without relief. One morning as he prayed over this, the thought came to him, "You must love more." This thought was so imperative that he began to examine his thinking. At first he thought: "Why, I love everybody. There is no one that I hate." Then the names of three fellow church members came to thought, individuals with whom he had had some differences of human opinion in committee work and the work of the board of his branch church. He thought, "Why, I love all of them, even if they don't love me." This "even if they don't love me" began to bother him.
Then he began to reason along this line, "Why, I think that I am the image of divine Love, that I am expressing the love of God, but that here are others, made in a different mold, who do not love, who do not express the nature of divine Love." He prayed over this until he saw clearly that all of God's children reflect their Father-Mother Love, and that there are no hateful or unloving individuals anywhere. That afternoon he received a telephone call from one of these three individuals who said: "I have just been thinking. We should like to come over and see you this evening. Can't we let bygones be bygones and pick up our friendship the way it always was before our disagreement?"
He was only too happy to have them do so. The following morning he received a second telephone call with the same results. The following afternoon came the third telephone call. There was a reconciliation that brought a sense of harmony and a working togetherness within their branch church. He realized that with the sense of the universality of Love had come his complete freedom from the physical problem. The healing was permanent.
Here is illustrated in a very practical way the power of God as divine Love in one's daily living and experience. This divine Love not only heals discord and disease but also supplies our every human need.
When God, who is Love, is understood and lived, what wonderful things come to pass in the lives of individuals! This would be equally true for men and nations. Truly mankind's greatest need is to understand this living God, the God of Christ Jesus, which the Master taught and demonstrated as the All-in-all of his being, whom John defined as divine Love.
The God of Christian Science is not a dead God but a living God, a God who loves and is to be understood, loved, and lived moment by moment, day by day.
Mankind's only real need is to understand and to love God supremely. Then men will reflect the Love which is God and love their neighbor as themselves. They will see themselves and their neighbor as Jacob saw the face of Esau—as the reflection of divinity. When this true concept of God, this highest sense of Deity, is enshrined in the hearts of men, there will be no more discord, no more warfare, no more poverty, no more human ignorance, no more disease, nor sin, nor disaster. Death itself will disappear before this understanding as it has always disappeared in the presence of the Christ, which reveals the truth of God and of man, the Christ as demonstrated in the experience of Jesus and of those whom he raised from the dead.
The so-called forces of evil will be found to be powerless, and Love will rule the hearts, the minds, and the lives of men. This understanding comes first to the consciousness of the individual. It comes as a revelation, with inspiration and with understanding. Then it can spread its healing presence in the lives of others who come within the radius of the thinking of those who understand this highest and holiest sense of Deity, of the living God, divine Love.
In her sermon The People's Idea of God Mrs. Eddy says, "As our ideas of Deity become more spiritual, we express them by objects more beautiful."peo., p. 14. Farther on she adds: "Thus it is that our ideas of divinity form our models of humanity. O Christian Scientist, thou of the church of the new-born; awake to a higher and holier love for God and man; put on the whole armor of Truth; rejoice in hope; be patient in tribulation—that ye may go to the bed of anguish, and look upon this dream of life in matter, girt with a higher sense of omnipotence; and behold once again the power of divine Life and Love to heal and reinstate man in God's own image and likeness, having 'one Lord, one faith, one baptism.' "
