In the Christian Science Sunday School, which I started attending when I was eleven, I discovered something wonderfully comforting and at the same time eye-opening: God is the Father and Mother of all; therefore, man is God's beloved child.
This discovery of God's fatherhood and motherhood was particularly meaningful to me at that time because my mother had just passed on, and my father proved unable to care for my younger brother and me. I will always be deeply grateful for the aunt and uncle who stepped forward to act as parents for us; but I am even more grateful for the understanding of God as Father-Mother, which Christian Science provides, because this spiritual fact has opened up a new world for me. The significance of this fact has continued to shape both my life and my career—as a father of two sons and as an educator responsible for the care and teaching of youngsters of all races from around the world.
Obviously, God is not our Father and Mother in any physical sense. Such an outlook would lead to the misconception that has long dominated and clouded religious thinking—namely, that of a manlike deity, god shaped in the image of men. And to think of God as some kind of exalted physical being is to deny that which Jesus taught when he spoke of God as Spirit. The term Father-Mother, as used in Christian Science, is not a description of gender. It expresses, instead, in a manner that everyone can understand and appreciate, the creative, nurturing, parenting nature of Spirit, God, the source and substance of all real being.
