In the Bible we read: "Who hath put wisdom in the inward parts? or who hath given understanding to the heart?" Job 38:36;
Man's real qualities can be only good, reflecting the intelligence, love, and purity of God, man's creator. It is comforting and reassuring to know that all the seeming foibles and unlovely traits of the mortal personality, which would distress or degrade, are not fixed and permanent qualities of the individual. From the Bible and from the textbook of Christian Science, Science and Health by Mrs. Eddy, students of Christian Science learn how to eliminate the errors of mortal sense that make man seem less than perfect.
Those who look for human betterment that has its basis in a material sense of existence are now discussing the possibility that better human beings may someday be made by laboratory methods. Some suggest that since human beings seem prone to hereditary defects of organism and character, good qualities might be programmed into the human body by selected genes, to fit a prearranged choice.
It is apparent to students of Christian Science that causation is not in matter. To reach the harmony of being, it is not a question of programming perfection into man. Man is already perfect, the spiritual idea of God. Christ Jesus, in his great love for humanity, taught man's true spiritual status as the effect of the one creator, divine Love. He even allowed his body to be crucified to prove, by raising it from death, that man is immortal. He instructed his followers through all time, "Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect." Matt. 5:48;
Christian Science, or the Science of Christ, Truth, makes plain to modern thought Christ Jesus' method of demonstrating man's perfection. By means of prayerful listening for the direction of the divine Mind, or the intelligence that is God, each individual can learn how to destroy or eliminate from his thinking such unlovely traits as envy, impatience, greed, jealousy, hatred, and resentment. These are things that make for crime, unhappiness, and illness. The same holds true for so-called inherited tendencies to disease, malformation, or malfunction of any kind.
Christ Jesus healed both moral and physical illness by the same prayerful understanding that God never created anything unlike Himself. Followers of Christ Jesus today, by practicing Christian Science, accept the totality of man's exemption from sin, sickness, and death.
By our eliminating negative thinking, or material-mindedness, the positive spiritual and moral qualities, such as kindness, patience, honesty, love, forgiveness, generosity, and health, or wholeness, are revealed. The spiritual qualities, which we know as our highest selfhood, constitute man as the likeness of God, already perfect as God is perfect, needing no human agency, however well-meaning, to improve him. God created man in His own image, good, beautiful, pure, and holy. By prayerfully affirming and living these qualities and denying the negative, or evil, traits as unreal, each individual can prove for himself his wonderful status as a son of God, for "whatsoever God doeth, it shall be for ever: nothing can be put to it, nor any thing taken from it." Eccl. 3:14;
What of the claim that physical scientists may someday have the ability to construct better mortals through selection of genes? Mrs. Eddy handles this development of mortal mind in Science and Health, where she writes: "Naturalists ask: 'What can there be, of a material nature, transmitted through these bodies called eggs,—themselves composed of the simplest material elements,—by which all peculiarities of ancestry, belonging to either sex, are brought down from generation to generation?' The question of the naturalist amounts to this: How can matter originate or transmit mind? We answer that it cannot." Science and Health, p. 551;
From the Christianly scientific standpoint, man is an idea, a spiritually mental manifestation of an all-knowing, all-powerful, all-loving creative Mind. Any appearance otherwise results from a material concept of man, which is an unlikeness of God since God is Spirit only. Since the real individuality of man is already perfect and needs no changing, in fact, cannot be changed from God's image, any quality that seems to need changing or improving is a mortal, material sense of things.
Any attempt to bring about a better human being by material programming would not result in true individuality but in repetitious copies of some arbitrary pattern. This is a fantastic dream, whose abnormality should expose its falsity. Indeed, researchers themselves are anxious about the possible use of their discoveries, asking who could have the wisdom and daring to decide what kind of new mortal is best,
All effort to improve the body and mind from a material standpoint starts from the wrong premise and is based on a false sense of creation. Such activity is futile and unnecessary since the real individuality of each one of us is complete and perfectly good. Science and Health states, "Spirit diversifies, classifies, and individualizes all thoughts, which are as eternal as the Mind conceiving them; but the intelligence, existence, and continuity of all individuality remain in God, who is the divinely creative Principle thereof." p. 513;
Those earnestly seeking the way in Christian Science will continue the consecrated work of prayerfully destroying in thought and daily life all that is unworthy of the true idea of self. Understanding his real selfhood, the individual will love himself. Seeing his fellowmen as also perfect, created by the same Father, each one can love his brothers. He can see through their negative, ungodlike activities undertaken because of ignorance. By being good he shows his willingness to accept good as his reflection of Life, the Life that is God. He can look forward to the actual realization of perfect manhood.
The Bible puts it this way: "The earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God."Rom. 8:19; And Mrs. Eddy writes: "The Revelator tells us of 'a new heaven and a new earth.' Have you ever pictured this heaven and earth, inhabited by beings under the control of supreme wisdom?" Science and Health, p. 91.
