Paul, encouraging the newly minted Christians at Thessalonica, wrote, “Ye are all the children of light, and the children of the day: we are not of the night, nor of darkness” (I Thessalonians 5:5). And to the Ephesians he wrote, “Walk as children of light” (Ephesians 5:8). He may as well have said, “You do not belong to the ignorance of matter—of mortality, limitation, darkness. Live enlightened, in the understanding of Spirit.”
Right off the bat in the Bible, the first chapter of Genesis alludes to God as Spirit. And because He is portrayed as an intelligent and all-wise creator, we may conclude that God is Mind. God’s children, described as made in His image and likeness, must therefore be spiritual and intelligent ideas. Wise King Solomon spoke of God’s infinitude: “Behold, the heaven and heaven of heavens cannot contain thee” (I Kings 8:27).
To human sense, trees, mountains, horses, and men have a very solid look and feel, and we think of them as material—trunks of wood, chunks of rock, bodies of flesh and blood, all subject to limitation and decay. But what if they are—as logic insists they must be as products of infinite Spirit, Mind—images of thought, and not matter?
And what if we, as spiritual beings, are governed by spiritual laws—divine laws of Life, Truth, and Love—which, when understood and obeyed, produce health and harmony, in evidence of Spirit’s presence and power?
Then the world’s assumption that matter is a solid, objective reality, subject to sickness and mortality, must be a misconception!
Mary Baker Eddy, who discovered the Science or laws of God that Jesus practiced, and who named her discovery Christian Science, wrote: “In Spirit there is no matter, even as in Truth there is no error, and in good no evil. It is a false supposition, the notion that there is real substance-matter, the opposite of Spirit. Spirit, God, is infinite, all. Spirit can have no opposite” (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 278). And she urged: “Let us disrobe error. Then, when the winds of God blow, we shall not hug our tatters close about us” (Science and Health, p. 201).
This brings to mind the biblical story of blind Bartimaeus, who sat at the roadside begging. Upon learning that Christ Jesus was passing by, he called out to the Master for help. When people told him to hush, he cried louder. Jesus, pausing, summoned the man. “And [Bartimaeus], casting away his garment”—likely threadbare and filthy—“rose, and came to Jesus.” The account ends well for Bartimaeus: “Immediately he received his sight, and followed Jesus in the way” (see Mark 10:46–52).
Out of darkness into light. In a similar way, humanity is rising to its feet and gravitating towards the light of Truth—the light of Spirit’s allness. The matter model is becoming tattered and faded.
What does this mean for people who wish to follow Jesus in the way he lived and healed? It means we must be alert and watchful that we’re not blindly accepting the mortal model of materiality—the error of believing that life, substance, and intelligence are in or of matter—as the basis and nature of everything.
Christ, Truth, compels humanity to let error go, pitch it aside, and rise like Bartimaeus in the strength of Spirit. Willingness to relinquish the popular worldview of life as matter-based for the true conception of life as mental and spiritual is practical. It brings health and healing, as a recent experience of mine illustrates.
Capsizing in heavy winds or while learning boat-handling skills is common when racing small sailboats. This happened to me during a training session, while rounding a mark in the ocean. I was thrown from the boat and smacked the water hard. In the ensuing days my side was tender, and though I could breathe without impairment, I was otherwise uncomfortable.
The sense of myself as an injured, material mortal persisted that week, until this statement opened my eyes and brought me to my feet, so to speak: “Mortals are no more material in their waking hours than when they act, walk, see, hear, enjoy, or suffer in dreams” (Science and Health, p. 397).
That realization was the turning point. No longer did I feel an anxious, false sense of responsibility for healing a material body, since I’d more fully grasped that “there is no matter to cope with” (Mary Baker Eddy, Miscellaneous Writings 1883–1896, p. 183). I was dealing with thought alone. And, as the darkness of fear and the false belief of the body as matter vanished, dissolved in the light of Spirit’s allness, so did the discomfort. Within a day I felt normal and was free.
Every aspect of a dream is mental; everyone accepts that. Christian Science teaches that our world and everything in it is a wholly mental construct, and so thought drives our experience. And when we’re entertaining thoughts of injury or illness, sensuality or pain, it’s thought that needs renovating, for “mortal mind rules all that is mortal,” writes Eddy in Science and Health, adding, “The action of so-called mortal mind must be destroyed by the divine Mind to bring out the harmony of being” (p. 400).
As Mind’s image and likeness or reflection, you and I are the embodiment of spiritual qualities such as love, intelligence, strength, and integrity. Color, form, and outline are spiritually mental attributes as well, existing in the eternal Mind as expressions of God’s goodness. Divine qualities can never be injured or strained because they are not material, nor can they ever be absent, because they spring from ever-present Principle, God—Life, Truth, and Love.
Pitching aside the matter-based perspective and its concomitants—fear, frustration, limitation, and the like—and holding thought faithfully to the good, pure, and true, is effective prayer that utilizes the healing power of Christian Science.
Christ Jesus taught, “The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light” (Matthew 6:22). When asked by a student what it means to keep your eye single, Eddy replied: “It means having only one reality, and that is Spirit,” and she followed up with, “Never forget this” (see We Knew Mary Baker Eddy, Expanded Edition, Vol. 2, p. 196).
Nothing could be more natural and progressive than for humanity to rise up, like Bartimaeus, attracted to the light of Christ, responsive to the voice of Truth. No longer holding on to error and blindly accepting the mortal model of existence, but with eyes wide open to Spirit’s allness, we’ll be victorious over challenges, walking as children of light.
