Christian Science helps any of us to open our thought to the infinite nature of God’s goodness, and to question things that we might otherwise assume to be true. For example, Christian Science challenges the widely held assumption that we are incomplete beings needing a partner to make us whole. Since God made each of us in His image and likeness, each of us is a unique spiritual reflection of the whole spectrum of the qualities and capacities of God, who is infinite Spirit and divine Life. Whatever is in the original must be in the reflection. It would not be possible for an idea of God to reflect only half of God’s nature.
Although people generally think of themselves as having either a male or female physicality, spiritual sense shows us that our true identity is not physical at all, but rather wholly spiritual; and we each include, by reflection, both the masculine and feminine qualities of God. This completeness of each of God’s ideas is, I believe, what Jesus is referring to when he said, “From the beginning of the creation God made them male and female” (Mark 10:6), and what Mary Baker Eddy pointed to when she wrote in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, “Let the ‘male and female’ of God’s creating appear” (p. 249).
All have the God-given capacity to understand and express more of their completeness as God’s child, and to experience the increasing joy and fulfilment this brings to relationships with others. Our need is to cultivate the “unselfish affections” inherent in knowing this spiritual wholeness, as Science and Health points out (see p. 365). Relationships, including marriage, afford an opportunity to do this, bringing out our innate capacity to share goodness and joy. This can happen quite naturally. However, there are times when our interactions and relationships with others, and the need to resolve conflicts, can demand a severe struggle within ourselves, as we yield to a more expansive view of God and His creation, and let go of limited views.
