I was raised as a student of Christian Science, and I had certainly accepted and even found healing in the understanding that man is the image and likeness of God, as we learn from the first chapter of Genesis, and is therefore spiritual. But I can remember a time when I was overly focused on life as a spiritual journey that required me to dutifully make progress. An outsized sense of personal responsibility burdened me. We should and do obediently answer God’s call and follow it with humility, but after I attended a Christian Science lecture that focused on God’s infinitude, let’s just say that the walls and roof were blown off my understanding of God’s creation! I was beginning to see there were some big lessons in store for me.
I got a glimpse of all of us belonging eternally and timelessly to God, the divine and infinite Principle of the universe called Mind, and that none of us are on a “journey” toward being spiritual—we already are. Life, God, is not dependent on us being a cause. Life is maintaining us perfectly according to divine law; everyone is necessary to Life as effect, not cause. And Life isn’t optional, isn’t something we can opt in to or out of. These are powerful healing truths.
Mary Baker Eddy eloquently explains: “Christian Science refutes everything that is not a postulate of the divine Principle, God. It is the soul of divine philosophy, and there is no other philosophy. It is not a search after wisdom, it is wisdom: it is God’s right hand grasping the universe,—all time, space, immortality, thought, extension, cause, and effect; constituting and governing all identity, individuality, law, and power. It stands on this Scriptural platform: that He made all that was made, and it is good, reflects the divine Mind, is governed by it; and that nothing apart from this Mind, one God, is self-created or evolves the universe” (Miscellaneous Writings 1883–1896, p. 364).
