I spent years climbing mountains. It was not uncommon for my friends and me to size up a new conquest by studying a mountain from a distance and deciding whether or not we were up to the challenge of scaling it.
But as long as we were eyeing it from a distance, it was still just a mountain in the distance—and we were only dreamers. We might have felt close to nature, or maybe even prideful of past physical accomplishments as we contemplated those climbs. But it wasn’t until we actually made the climb and reached the peak that we could revel in the feeling of being one with the mountain and in harmony with all that was within our view.
Isn’t this analogous to how many people sometimes think of God—a Deity that is magnificent but far off—“watching over us” as if we exist on a lower plane?
This is not to trivialize anyone’s concept of God. Making sense of something our senses cannot detect, let alone comprehend, has challenged the ages. Yet history’s attempts to address the issue have rarely risen above what man himself can see—a physical universe that, at its best, happens to be governed by a “spiritual” God. This reinforces a sense of separation between God and man, and a need to “go to” Him and ask for His favor.
Jesus corrected this misconception with his remarkable assertion, “I and my Father are one” (John 10:30). There is no inkling of separation in that statement. It hints at a oneness that repudiates any suggestion of distance. In fact, the consciousness of oneness takes distance entirely out of the picture. It speaks only of unity of heart, soul, and mind—even vision—with God. It creates a completely different perspective, not of man thinking about God, but thinking as God thinks; not of man looking at God, but seeing as God sees.
Jesus never spoke of being anything but one with his Father. Yet isn’t this sense of “two” how our prayers often start? Don’t we sometimes go to God to implore Him to enter our consciousness, replace our faulty thinking, rearrange a few material events, and thus demonstrate for us how tidy His creation is?
Jesus never spoke of being anything but one with his Father.
The human view of God being “on high” may partly stem from accounts of prophets lifting their eyes to heaven when talking with God, as Jesus did when raising Lazarus from the dead. It is related in the Gospel of John that “Jesus lifted up his eyes, and said, Father, I thank thee that thou hast heard me” (11:41). This and many other references throughout the Bible can seem to imply that God is somewhere else, not with us or we with Him, and that our prayers need to reach Him to bring down His blessings. But a deeper reading of these accounts reveals a wholly different understanding of “looking up.”
Being one with the Father, Jesus had no need to look beyond himself to find God. He knew that God was already, always present—ever-present, to use a term frequently employed by the founder of Christian Science, Mary Baker Eddy. Mrs. Eddy wrote of “looking away” from the physical evidence that our senses report, thereby enabling our spiritual sense to discern God’s presence right where those images appear to be. She writes, “We should look away from the opposite supposition that man is created materially, and turn our gaze to the spiritual record of creation, to that which should be engraved on the understanding and heart ‘with the point of a diamond’ and the pen of an angel” (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 521).
What a view this is, and what a difference it makes in our ability to experience the magnificence of God’s great creation.
Oneness is not a right or a privilege that was reserved for Jesus alone.
Sometimes when we struggle with sickness, suffering, financial stress, family disharmony, relationship problems, etc., we find that our prayers fail to bring the peace we long for. But if we think of ourselves as standing outside of, or separate from, God, and that we are looking up to God to seek His grace, isn’t that the equivalent of starting from the point of separation and hoping for divine intervention in our earthly condition? Of course we might derive some comfort from knowing we are talking to God, but wouldn’t there be more permanent solace in knowing we are one with God, not outside of Him at all?
Oneness is not a right or a privilege that was reserved for Jesus alone. It is our right also, as Jesus himself affirmed. “These words spake Jesus, and lifted up his eyes to heaven, and said, Father, the hour is come; … I have manifested thy name unto the men which thou gavest me out of the world: … I pray for them: I pray not for the world, but for them which thou hast given me; for they are thine … as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us” (John 17).
But what happens if the belief of separation is so great that we find ourselves pleading to feel God’s presence and influence? When petitioning God in prayer is all we can muster, the humble desire to turn to God—to relinquish, even in some small degree, our faith in matter—is rewarded. It puts us back on the path to feeling our oneness with our Father-Mother God.
This sense of our oneness gives us a new perspective. It enables us to see what God sees—and to look away from the imagery the human senses use to define the world. We see through the mask of imperfection, malformation, brokenness, and lack, which the senses throw at us, and see instead God’s magnificence right where those suggestive images seem to be. Instead of seeing an angry, sick, or destitute person, or a divided or declining nation, our gaze turns to God to see what Jesus saw and what our spiritual sense enables us to discern—God’s perfect creation; His image and likeness, upright, whole, perfect, and strong. Our oneness with the Father is what ensures that we can never be without, or separated from, anything God gives us—safety, health, beauty, prosperity, intelligence, peace. This is seeing as God sees, because we are seeing what He sees.
Otherwise we may always feel that we are looking for Him. We will always feel a little dwarfed, like a climber gazing at a massive mountain, or the Psalmist who sang, “When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained; what is man, that thou art mindful of him?” (Psalms 8:3, 4). But when we change our distance-based perspective to one of sharing the vision of our Maker, the truth is joyously revealed to us—as it was to that same Psalmist whose vision rose until he could triumphantly proclaim, “Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands; thou hast put all things under his feet” (verse 6).
