Growing numbers of people are beginning to recognize that man is more than the material sciences make him out to be—that our true nature is actually spiritual and good, a reflection of the divine, which transcends what the physical senses report about us. This realization raises profound questions: What does it mean to be spiritual? What is the source of good? and What is the divine?
Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer of Christian Science, found that as her understanding of spiritual, good, and divine evolved, so did her ability to heal people of physical, mental, moral, and other challenges, and to do so with scientific certainty. But that meant relinquishing much of what she had learned from traditional religion, the material sciences, and the five physical senses. Instead, it was necessary to develop a spiritual sense or understanding of who we really are.
The answers began to unfold to her after she was healed of life-threatening injuries through prayer alone and by pondering the teachings and healing works of Christ Jesus in the Bible. To understand how the healing had happened, she devoted the next three years to deep study of the Scriptures. One particular focus was the two opposing stories of creation, Genesis 1—the spiritual account—and Genesis 2 and 3—the material account. Because these records negate each other, it was clear that only one of them could be true.
Genesis 1 says that there is only one creator—God, Spirit—who creates the entire universe and everything in it spiritually, and that everything God makes is very good. It also says that God creates man—male and female—in the divine image and likeness and blesses him, causing him to manifest His power.
Genesis 2 and 3, on the other hand, contain the allegory of a manlike god and a failed creation. Adam and Eve are formed materially and are able to think and act independently of their creator. Consequently, when the serpent (the physical senses or personal sense) seduces them into believing they could be gods themselves and could be benefited by believing in another power called evil, they end up being cursed to suffer throughout life. This is the exact opposite of the male and female of Spirit’s creating, and totally contrary to the message of the Bible as a whole, which teaches that God, Spirit, alone creates and has power.
Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy states: “The first record assigns all might and government to God, and endows man out of God’s perfection and power. The second record chronicles man as mutable and mortal,—as having broken away from Deity and as revolving in an orbit of his own” (p. 522). In fact, since God is infinite good, in reality, each of us reflects only good. Moreover, Ecclesiastes 3:14 says that whatever God does is forever, and nothing can be added to it nor anything taken from it. Therefore no evil, such as disease or hatred or dishonesty, can be added to God’s creation, nor can spiritual qualities such as health, strength, wisdom, or compassion be taken from it. And this is true about each of us eternally.
Jesus always made the distinction between himself and his Father, God—the real source of good.
But the material senses would always tempt us to believe that the second account of creation is true, that we could be creators and the source of good, or even that we could be powerful gods in our own right. This seems deceptively plausible when we are successful and things are going well for us materially—good job, beautiful home, satisfying relationships—until things begin to fall apart, which they eventually always seem to do in the human experience. In the true, spiritual creation, good is infinite and eternal. It cannot be lost or lessened.
And this brings us to the second point. What is good, and where does it come from? Christ Jesus explains it most clearly. The Bible tells us that he was the Son of God, the Messiah or Savior sent by God to lift mankind out of sin and suffering; that he was sinless, pure, compassionate, and humble; that he healed every kind of disease, raised the dead, stilled storms, fed thousands with only a few loaves and fish, and overcame even his own death.
Yet in spite of all these good qualities and accomplishments, Jesus said, “Why callest thou me good? there is none good but one, that is, God” (Matthew 19:17). He also said, “I can of mine own self do nothing. . . . It is the spirit that quickeneth [gives life]; the flesh profiteth nothing” (John 5:30; 6:63).
Jesus always made the distinction between himself and his Father, God—the real source of good. Jesus reflected that goodness without measure, but he was not the source of it. And since good comes from God, it must bless everyone; it must be reliable, ever present, and meet every human need—unlike the “good” that originates in matter or human minds and can be perverted, lost, or undermined. God, good, is the only power, so there can be no opposition to God’s goodness.
But wasn’t Jesus divine? And what does it mean to be divine?
The primary definition of divine refers only to the one God and His unique attributes and power. Jesus was not divine, in this sense, because he was not God. The infinite God could never be “in” a finite man, but God’s nature was manifested uniquely through Christ Jesus because he was the “only begotten” Son of the Father. His was a virgin birth through the Holy Spirit, not through human procreation.
Jesus manifested the divine nature through his unwavering obedience to God’s law, enabling him to reflect the divine power, redeeming people from sin and suffering by waking them to their true, spiritual nature. Science and Health explains: “The Christ was the Spirit which Jesus implied in his own statements: ‘I am the way, the truth, and the life;’ ‘I and my Father are one.’ This Christ, or divinity of the man Jesus, was his divine nature, the godliness which animated him” (p. 26).
It is tempting to believe that when Christ Jesus said, “I and my Father are one,” he meant he was God. But in the Gospel of John he says, “Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on me through their word; that they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that thou hast sent me” (17:20, 21). He was referring not to physical oneness, but to spiritual oneness.
If being one with God meant that Jesus was God, then that would make us all gods. Yet he taught and lived the First and Second Commandments—that we must have no other gods besides the one, infinite Spirit, and that we must not worship anything or anyone else.
Mrs. Eddy explains: “If we say that the sun stands for God, then all his rays collectively stand for Christ, and each separate ray for men and women. God the Father is greater than Christ, but Christ is ‘one with the Father,’ and so the mystery is scientifically explained. There can be but one Christ” (The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, p. 344).
Jesus demonstrated that we are one with God because Spirit is our source, our only true Father. Since the material senses perceive only physical, human selfhood and matter, Jesus taught the need for each of us to be “born again,” not of the flesh, but of the Spirit, God—that is, to put off that false sense of an independent mind, a material body, and a human personality, and instead to recognize ourselves as the reflection of divine Spirit.
We need to realize that everyone worships (honors, serves, or fears) something. But why does what we worship matter? Because if what we worship is human or material, physical or sensual, it will always be dualistic—including both good and evil, health and sickness, life and death. It will always be variable, unreliable, fatal.
But when we recognize and worship only one God, Spirit, who is the source of all good, all life, all health, all happiness, and recognize the Christ as the true idea of God voicing good, voicing the divine message of our oneness with God, then we find that peace, health, joy, dominion, and security are ever present, undiminishing, immutable, indestructible, and eternally good, embracing all mankind.
False theology suggests that since God is Love itself, God is therefore more like a good friend who loves you—as well as suffers with you. But that would reduce God to a human or even a mortal. It is impossible for God to suffer, since He is omnipotent good, and it is therefore impossible for His likeness—spiritual man—to suffer. Since friends can change and betray, seeing God the way we see a human friend—loving us but having limited ability to help—makes our faith in God vulnerable to doubt and confusion. We need to resist the temptation to liken God to anything human or to use God as a sort of “cosmic bellhop” whom we call on to do our bidding or only when we need help. Understanding God as infinite divine Love, which is constant and never fails to deliver us from suffering when we follow His commandments, brings peace and confidence.
The reason we can trust God to deliver us in the most overwhelming, frightening situations is precisely because God is not human or material, but divine—the only, the absolute, the supreme power of the universe. God is infinite Love, meeting every need in a way that no human or material power ever could. Jesus instructed us to pray, “Hallowed be thy name” (Matthew 6:9). When referring to God, the Greek word for hallow means to regard Him as holy and worthy of reverence and awe.
We need to resist the temptation to liken God to anything human or to use God as a sort of “cosmic bellhop” we call on only when we need help.
In my own experience, I had been taught from childhood to know God, Spirit, as our ever-present Father-Mother God caring for and protecting us. However, as I began achieving human successes, I found myself being pulled into a very material way of reasoning while at the same time thinking, “I am spiritual, I am good, I am safe,” etc. Assuming I could rely on my own wisdom and talent and make my own decisions irrespective of God’s law led to some not-so-good decisions (understatement!) and to some very unpleasant suffering. Then I learned that God is the great and only "I am."
As I began striving to be “born again”—to relinquish a material, personal, or human sense of who I am—I began to realize that divine inspiration comes only from God and never fails to guide us rightly. It has been an ongoing lesson, with new temptations appearing in new forms that would deceive and mislead me into believing there could be many minds, many powers, many gods. But the deeper my awe and reverence for God becomes, and the more humble my obedience to God’s law, the sooner I see manifested in my experience the reality that there is only one divine Mind, one divine law governing all of us every moment in complete harmony. As Mrs. Eddy states in No and Yes, “God’s law is in three words, ‘I am All;’ …” (p. 30).
So many healings and blessings have come from cultivating the humility to see that we are not cause, but rather, we are each effect—the perfect effect of one perfect cause. We are not the divine Mind, but rather we are what the divine Mind is knowing—beauty, intelligence, health, creativity, freedom, dominion, innocence—continuously manifested as God’s precious spiritual idea. As the divine image and likeness of God, each one of us naturally reflects the divine.
