Sometimes independence is equated with a self-centered escape from the trials and obligations of this world. Many with ill based pride declare their independence of social and personal restrictions. The outlaw may boast of his independence from what he considers the irksome discipline of law. But such independence has no ring of true freedom. It is flawed by a glaring omission—generally the result of ignorance of man's relationship to God.
Christian Science makes clear that the real man—the spiritual man of His creating—instead of being dependent on matter for good, is really totally dependent on God for his happiness, activity, supply, and joy. When we glimpse this essential dependence, it begins to free us from sin, sickness, lack, poverty, and death. Then we humbly declare and rejoice in this wonderful dependence on God and our independence of evil.
John Adams said of Independence Day in America, "It ought to be commemorated as the day of deliverance, by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty." Letter to Abigail Adams, July 3, 1776; The despotic inclinations of the human, or mortal, mind are opposed in every age to God-bestowed freedom. These encroachments come in the guise of temptations to indulge hatreds, animosities, and prejudices. Yet fundamental confidence and trust in God, which comes to us as we understandingly declare and affirm His allness, assures our independence of evil. Mrs. Eddy gives a new, spiritual view of independence especially needed today as so many human societies become ever more complex. "Like our nation," she writes, "Christian Science has its Declaration of Independence. God has endowed man with inalienable rights, among which are self-government, reason, and conscience."
