I've talked with a lot of young adults who are searching for a deeper sense of their identity. They're looking for freedom from the limiting, mortal views of life and individuality. They are naturally concerned about the nature of true manhood and womanhood, where they've come from, and where they're going. It helps to realize that we've all existed way before we ever had human parents. In fact, we've existed with God through eternity. He has always expressed Himself in us through the manhood and womanhood we manifest as the creation of God, who is our Father and our Mother. "Man and woman as coexistent and eternal with God forever reflect, in glorified quality, the infinite Father-Mother God," Science and Health, p. 516 writes Mary Baker Eddy.
The qualities of both manhood and womanhood have always, then, been a part of our identity as the expression of Father-Mother God. You can't consider manhood apart from womanhood, because they both have their source in the oneness of God, whom we all reflect as man, God's spiritual image. God's oneness is expressed in individual, complete man. Man isn't a partial idea of God; man is the compound idea of God— the full representation of Father-Mother God, expressing all the attributes of manhood and womanhood. The Bible's New Testament states: "Ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus. For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus." Gal. 3:26-28
We don't really have our origin in matter. God's creation is 100 percent spiritual because the creator is divine Spirit. Realizing this, even if only to a small degree, liberates and regenerates as nothing else can. These words of Mrs. Eddy's from a poem are reassuring, because while they refer to Christ, they also apply to our true, eternal selfhood: "No natal hour and mother's tear,/To thee belong." Poems, p. 29
