How have some of the major breakthroughs in the arts and the natural sciences come about? Someone has challenged the prevailing orthodoxies. Progress often flows from our questioning of accepted views and popular assumptions. Christ Jesus in his teachings and works certainly challenged the theological theories and practices of his day. His whole life, his healings, his role, were a challenge at the deepest level to orthodoxy, to material conventionality.
The Pharisees, we might almost say, personified orthodoxy. Christ Jesus' disciples offended their sense of the sabbath because, hungry, the disciples plucked at the grain in the fields for a few kernels to eat on that day. Jesus, understanding God as the source of all law, controlling and regulating all that exists, seemed unorthodox to the Pharisees. Yet he brought a spiritual sense of proportion to the situation. "The sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath," Mark 2:27; he said.
The Science of Christ also challenges standard mortal reasoning at the deepest level: it calls into question the reliability of the senses; it confronts the belief that man is actually fleshly and mortal. It reverses such sensual appearances, asserting that man is flawless and uncarnal.
