A popular mode of thinking today maintains that we can create our own experiences, and that thought determines the circumstances and events in our lives, good or bad. Proponents of this view often go further to say that if we carefully and specifically visualize our wants, those very things will materialize in our experience.
Many of my friends have enthusiastically shared this view with me saying it’s very much like Christian Science. I realize it’s important to recognize the things that I have in common with those who hold other beliefs, and I’m grateful that the love of our one Father-Mother God enables me to find common ground with them. But I’ve found that it is equally important to understand the distinction between theories that begin with the human mind and those that begin with divine Mind, or God, which is the basis of Christian Science practice.
Mary Baker Eddy, who discovered Christian Science, based her religion squarely on the First Commandment, “Thou shalt have no other gods before me” (Ex. 20:3). In fact, she wrote in her textbook, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, “The First Commandment is my favorite text. It demonstrates Christian Science. It inculcates the triunity of God, Spirit, Mind; it signifies that man shall have no other spirit or mind but God, eternal good, and that all men shall have one Mind” (p. 340).
