Q: For fifty years I’ve been trying to figure this out: If we are spiritual, and not material, why do we experience and appreciate things like good food and beautiful weather? Aren’t these material things as unreal as the error of fear and sickness?
A: Well, my friend, I can’t say that after fifty years I suddenly have the right words for you! But here are some thoughts that you might add to what, no doubt, will eventually become a full and satisfying answer.
You may not realize your question touches on issues that have to do with the very fabric of life—of all we believe to be true about matter, substance, creation, even reality itself. The Founder of Christian Science, Mary Baker Eddy, challenges popular belief in the reality of matter, proclaiming, “Matter is a frail conception of mortal mind; …” (Miscellaneous Writings 1883–1896, p. 87). The term mortal mind is used here to describe a supposed mind apart from the one immortal Mind, God. Calling matter a “frail” conception of this mind might seem highly puzzling—at least for the person who feels that matter is God’s great gift of powerful and permanent substance to His creation! Actually, Mrs. Eddy isn’t challenging God’s good creation when she says this. She isn’t denying substance or reality to what truly underlies the special things we see around us or experience, like the beauty of nature or the pleasure of an enjoyable meal.
Nevertheless, there is something profoundly important that she is aggressively rejecting. It’s that God’s eternally good creation can be vulnerable to evil, that it can be limited, that it can deteriorate, or be harmful. Now, that discordant sense of reality is a good description of matter. In other words, matter is essentially a false perception of reality. Matter is a limited, vulnerable sense. She is rejecting that destructive sense of reality.
The second chapter of Genesis is a prime example of this sort of view of things. It’s the lens of material or matter sense. Mrs. Eddy reasoned (and demonstrated) that if we see reality through spiritual or Spirit sense, we’ll see creation as Christ Jesus saw it. Spirit-based, not matter-based. Harmonious instead of discordant. Perfect and complete. In a word, the perfect and true creation portrayed in the first chapter of Genesis. And the reality he saw through Spirit sense trumped the distortion others saw through matter sense. When their material view yielded to his spiritual view, sin and sickness yielded to sinlessness and health.
Jesus could say, “Nothing shall by any means hurt you” (Luke 10:19), because he saw through a lens of spiritual sense that reveals existence as permanently harmonious. So, suppose you eat something that would be considered harmful, or your beautiful weather gives you an uncomfortable sunburn! Christian Science says that the concept of nourishment, or the beauty of nature, isn’t inherently dangerous if we see deeper into the spiritual sense of existence. But a matter-sense view gives rise to dimness, distortion, or even danger.
That point about matter being “frail” appears in an answer Mrs. Eddy gives to a question about the reality of matter. She cautions us to be careful about dismissing all that appears to be material. In fact, she writes: “To take all earth’s beauty into one gulp of vacuity and label beauty nothing, is ignorantly to caricature God’s creation, which is unjust to human sense and to the divine realism. In our immature sense of spiritual things, let us say of the beauties of the sensuous universe: ‘I love your promise; and shall know, some time, the spiritual reality and substance of form, light, and color, of what I now through you discern dimly; and knowing this, I shall be satisfied’ ” (Miscellaneous Writings, p. 87).
I’d say you are safe to enjoy normal nourishment and good weather as long as you realize that, at best, they only hint at, or offer a promise of, reality that is vastly more substantial, more satisfying, more safe, and beautiful. As Mrs. Eddy says, “Enjoying good things is not evil, but becoming slaves to pleasure is” (The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, p. 197).
Bon appétit!
Nate Talbot
