Godliness is a word we don’t hear much anymore. Maybe it’s because, traditionally, to be godly means to be devoutly religious or pious—not necessarily a current social trend. Or maybe it’s because the word is perceived as being tinged with uncertainty, as when the Bible says, “Great is the mystery of godliness” (I Timothy 3:16).
We learn about the concept of godliness from the Bible. And Christian Science, discovered by Mary Baker Eddy, teaches that godliness is one’s innate divine nature. The supreme example on earth of the inherent godliness reflected by man was Christ Jesus. In her book Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, Mrs. Eddy writes, “This Christ, or divinity of the man Jesus, was his divine nature, the godliness which animated him” (p. 26).
As children of God, we each have an innate Christly nature, because we reflect God, divine Spirit, who created all of us as spiritual ideas in His image. Our reflection of God is much more than the human face we see in a mirror. This reflection is not only our divinely perfect nature, our heritage from our Father-Mother God, it is our being as God’s idea. “The great truth in the Science of being, that the real man was, is, and ever shall be perfect, is incontrovertible; for if man is the image, reflection, of God, he is neither inverted nor subverted, but upright and Godlike” (Science and Health, p. 200).
