There’s an old (and surprisingly true) story that goes like this. A man comes to New York City for the first time, looking to buy some real estate as an investment. An unscrupulous businessman realizes this guy is gullible, so he pretends to be the current owner of the Brooklyn Bridge, points out its potential as a good investment, and dupes the man out of a huge sum of money. The lesson: Check for genuine ownership before buying.
While this might not sound like a spiritual lesson, this story has actually helped me understand a fundamental truth in Christian Science: Absolutely everything belongs to God. Why? As the one divine Mind, the All-in-all, God is the creator of His spiritual ideas, and these ideas remain in Mind—supported, sustained, and upheld as the pure and perfect expression of Mind. All-in-allness means that nothing good can be outside of God or sourced elsewhere. So it stands to reason that since God is the only Life, the only source of good, the only Love, then the only place we can find life, health, abundance, and love is in God.
That old story has also helped me understand how to stop falling for the temptation to look elsewhere for health and goodness: by identifying the trickster in our lives and how it tries to operate. In the Bible, in the book of Genesis, this trickster is typified as a subtle serpent that entices Eve into eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And in the textbook of Christian Science, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, Mary Baker Eddy gives the name animal magnetism or error to this fraudulent tempter.
