The Bible tells us that God is Spirit and perfect and that man (everyone) is made in God’s image and likeness. Jesus said, “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect” (Matthew 5:48). And Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures states: “The standard of perfection was originally God and man. Has God taken down His own standard, and has man fallen?” The book’s author, Mary Baker Eddy, answers in the negative: “God is the creator of man, and, the divine Principle of man remaining perfect, the divine idea or reflection, man, remains perfect” (p. 470).
This standard of perfect Principle and idea, perfect God and man, is basic to Christian Science healing. This is so because healing in Christian Science is not about repairing what is seen as discordant material conditions. Rather, it is about recognizing that those conditions exist in thought only and then yielding to the harmony of the divine consciousness, which is altogether good and knows nothing but perfection. Mrs. Eddy explains: “What you see, hear, feel, is a mode of consciousness, and can have no other reality than the sense you entertain of it” (Unity of Good, p. 8).
Merriam-webster.com gives these definitions of idea: “a transcendent entity that is a real pattern of which existing things are imperfect representations” and “a standard of perfection.” What are these “existing things” which are “imperfect representations” of ideas? One might assume that they are physical objects existing in an objective material world. But if everything we see, hear, and feel is a mode of consciousness, then these “things” are merely objectified imperfect concepts of what actually exist as perfect ideas of God.
