In a world seeking safety, health, peace, and prosperity, spiritual education is essential. It gives us an understanding of God, divine Principle. It opens our thought to spiritual solutions not gained by human knowledge and experience. And it saves and heals.
The word educate is derived from a Latin word meaning “to lead out.” Spiritual education promises to lead us permanently out of fear, ignorance, and error. It enables us to distinguish good from evil, truth from error, reality from unreality. It reveals the allness of God, good, and helps us to reject all that is unlike God.
According to academic theories, in education teachers’ minds lead the minds of their students. In Christian Science, however, it is understood that God is the only Mind of man—of each one of us as God’s spiritual idea. And this Mind imparts truth. In fact, the divine Mind is the saving Truth for which humanity is yearning. Individuals, through study of divine Science and prayer to the one Mind, are led to understand absolute Truth and to find healing solutions for the problems they may face.
The fact that such inspired education comes from the divine Mind—which communicates to humanity through Christ, Truth—is indicated in the Bible by the prophet Isaiah, who said: “And all thy children shall be taught of the Lord; and great shall be the peace of thy children” (Isaiah 54:13). The Lord truly is our great teacher.
Inspired education comes from God.
Christ Jesus, as God’s only begotten Son, is the supreme example of how spiritual education blesses one and all. The Gospels teach us how Jesus listened for and heard God’s instruction and was consistently able to break down supposed human limitations through the influence of the Christ he represented, the true idea of the divine Mind. The inspiration he received directly from God he imparted to others.
Moses, who “turned aside” to behold the burning bush when he saw it, would also become an excellent example of an inspired prophet sharing the spiritual instruction he received.
The fruits of the Christlike understanding of Jesus and the clear spirituality of Moses continue to educate us today. Moses’ Ten Commandments and Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount remain the bedrock of our spiritual instruction. And like these towering spiritual teachers, we too must be still and turn from material sense to see and receive, through spiritual sense, God’s revealing of Truth. Through God’s grace, the revelation of divine Science unfolds in human consciousness, and the material senses yield to the senses of Soul, which are spiritual, bringing to light right ideas that naturally broaden perception and enhance discernment. This raises thought beyond limiting human beliefs, and as a result, the influence of these beliefs upon us lessens and false concepts naturally fall away.
What we perceive as our spiritual education, unfolding to us in individual human consciousness, is, in divine reality, already complete. What appears as the human mind yielding to the divine Mind is really the unfolding of Mind’s spiritual ideas in true consciousness, in which all-knowing Mind is ceaselessly revealing itself in its idea, man. The more we yield to Mind’s constant self-revealing through spiritual sense and love, the more we apprehend divine Truth, and the more inspiring is our educational experience.
This joyous revelation of Truth in spiritual consciousness is natural and ongoing. Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, writes that Truth “unfold[s] its own immortal idea” (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 325). Divine unfoldment can’t be forced and it can’t be opposed.
This immortal idea of Truth is explained through the divine metaphysics contained in the Bible and the Christian Science textbook. Through the study of divine metaphysics we recognize and receive more of the truth of Spirit and our spiritual identity. As a result, our spiritual understanding increases, which inspires us to practice spiritual healing as demonstrated by Christ Jesus and elucidated by Mrs. Eddy in her writings.
In the Manual of The Mother Church, the Leader of the Christian Science movement provides for the precious privilege of Primary class instruction in Christian Science. This spiritual instruction is based on the chapter in Science and Health titled “Recapitulation,” and is established for “the elucidation of the Principle and rule of Christian Science through the higher meaning of the Scriptures,” as Mrs. Eddy says in The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany (p. 241).
Primary class instruction blesses the student, as well as humanity, perhaps more than all else. The twenty-four questions and answers in “Recapitulation” reveal the Science of God, Christ, and man, and show how to prove their suppositional opposites powerless. Class is an opportunity for student and teacher alike to experience the one Mind’s divine guidance and the natural unfolding of God’s ideas in spiritual education. A life-changing treasure of class instruction is learning how to pray specifically to bring healing to any human problem.
For example, I had a healing years ago that proves the blessings of spiritual education. I began to experience severe difficulty in breathing, and my movements were restricted considerably. In particular, I had difficulty climbing the stairs in our three-story home.
Yet, I can honestly say that I was not afraid. As a class-taught student of Christian Science, I recognized that this was a time for specific Christian Science treatment. And I knew Truth would uncover what needed to be handled in thought. I prayed, quietly pored over the Bible and Science and Health for answers, and calmly trusted God, who I knew was my Life.
Why was I so confident? Because my spiritual education had given me an unshakable trust in God’s ability to heal me; a heartfelt spiritual understanding of His healing presence and power. And if there was a hidden belief of ignorance, fear, or sin in my thought that needed to be uncovered and destroyed, I knew that Christ, Truth, would do it.
At the time of this difficulty I was board chairman for three nonprofit religious organizations, treasurer of my branch church, and Assistant Committee on Publication, in addition to being active in the public practice of Christian Science. While all this may have been right activity, it became apparent to me, as I examined my thought, that in the process of taking on more and more volunteer work, I had failed to give as much attention as I had in times past to the consecrated study and prayer necessary to preserve my own well-being.
I asked a Christian Science practitioner to pray with me. Over the course of daily Christian Science treatment, I became more inspired, studied and prayed more, breathed easier, and had the courage to go for short walks. Eventually these walks stretched into miles, and I was completely well.
By applying what I had learned, I was comforted, spiritually healed, and physically cured of this severe malady. Fear was destroyed and God’s allness, divine Love’s allness, was understood and felt. A commitment to continued spiritual growth, and to demonstrating the bright promises of spiritual education, had made the difference.
Mrs. Eddy writes, “The entire purpose of true education is to make one not only know the truth but live it …” (Miscellany, p. 252). Living the truth is demonstrating divine Love, which naturally results in working unselfishly not only for our own salvation, but for the salvation and healing of humanity.
