Beauty is a thing of life, which dwells forever in the eternal Mind and reflects the charms of His goodness in expression, form, outline, and color.
— MARY BAKER EDDY
HERE'S A QUESTION: How many prongs are there at the end of your toaster cord?
It's a loaded question, not because the answer—two—is anything out of the ordinary (at least not in the United States). Believe it or not, it's what those two prongs stand for that makes the query worth exploring. Positive and negative. Opposites.
When you think about it, the world seems to be full of opposites. North and South. Right and wrong. Male and female. Good and evil.
Actually, that last pairing is one that's well worth considering. It isn't introduced in the first story of creation—the story in the first chapter of Genesis, where everything is "very good." Where opposites like right and wrong or good and evil simply don't appear. Even the "male and female" in that story isn't presented as a set of opposites. "Male and female created he them," Gen. 1:27.Genesis 1 says of the individual of God's fashioning.
Genesis 1 gives the record of divine creation, in which the Divine expresses Himself as ever-unfolding completeness.
Male and female created He them— every individual. Both qualities in one. In each of us. It's a state of being that's characteristic of the whole Genesis 1 story: oneness, not twoness. Wholeness, not partialness. Unity, not divisions. Genesis 1 gives the record of divine creation, in which there could not be both matter and Spirit, in which God's spiritual creation, man, could never be divided by gender, but in which the Divine expresses Himself as ever-unfolding completeness.
In her spiritual interpretation of this creation story, Mary Baker Eddy pointed to Genesis 1:5—the creation of day and night—as concrete proof of this fact. "All questions as to the divine creation being both spiritual and material are answered in this passage," she wrote, "for though solar beams are not yet included in the record of creation, still there is light. This light is not from the sun nor from volcanic flames, but it is the revelation of Truth and of spiritual ideas."
But what about the so-called opposites of day and night? "The successive appearing of God's ideas is represented as taking place on so many evenings and mornings," Mrs. Eddy went on to explain, "—words which indicate, in the absence of solar time, spiritually clearer views of Him, views which are not implied by material darkness and dawn."Science and Health, p. 504 .
Mrs. Eddy's spiritual interpretation of the creation story systematically debunks the notion that the universe that God sees and knows as His own could express anything other than unified wholeness. And yet, what we see and experience day to day points to a strikingly different view—that opposites are endemic to human existence.
The story of error
In order to rest confidently in the truth of the Genesis 1 story, it's important to identify the origin of this mistaken view of life. Indeed, the lie of opposites is tied directly to Genesis 2, or to what Mary Baker Eddy referred to not as the "Spiritual narrative" of the previous chapter, but as "The story of error."
Of this false narrative Mrs. Eddy wrote: "The Science and truth of the divine creation have been presented in the verses already considered, and now the opposite error, a material view of creation, is to be set forth. The second chapter of Genesis contains a statement of this material view of God and the universe a statement which is the exact opposite of scientific truth as before recorded." lbid., p. 521.
It's actually liberating to recognize Genesis 2 as "the exact opposite of scientific truth," since identifying the inverted image of Truth as such—the inverted image, a lie—strips the lie of its power. In the case of the lie of opposites, this recognition eliminates the false notion that because there is good there has to be evil, because there is health there has to be sickness, or that because there is life there must, inevitably, be death. Too, it calls upon us to stop classifying ourselves as men and women, or as fathers and mothers, since inherent in such classification is conflict, tension.
The "male and female created he them" of Genisis 1 supplies a radically different perspective on identity and the unity of creation. It brings manhood and womanhood onto the same plane. It breaks the glass ceiling. And this view absolutely and completely eliminates subordination and the other manifestations of inequality.
"Make it on your own"
Where does the lie of gender begin? With the belief of birth into matter (Genesis 2 again), of course. Material birth implies a separation — the child separated from the mother, the umbilical cord cut. The baby is given a body of his own, a brain of his own, and told "make it on your own."
Then the classification begins. When was the baby born? This consideration immediately establishes the belief of age—a beginning and an ending. How much does the baby weigh? That turns one's thought to the belief of substance in matter. The question of boy or girl denies completeness by tying the child to a gender.
What an imposition on the individual of God's creating! "Principle and its idea is one ...," lbid., p. 465.wrote Mrs. Eddy. That's the sublime counterfact to the belief that we've ever been separated from our Mother. Divine birth bespeaks infinite continuity—renewal, refreshment, redemption, restoration. It promises that because we are the idea of Mind, we could never be separated from intelligence. As the offspring of Soul, we could never be disconnected from inspiration, from divine hearing and seeing.
This is birthright in its truest sense—that everything that God is, man, including you and me, inherits. If the subject is good, the object has to be. And the subject—God—is perfect, so the object—us—is perfection. Perfect cause and perfect effect. Perfect God and perfect man.
Our divine inheritance
I often think of this in my work as a Christian Science practitioner—that all I'm doing when I give Christian Science treatment is expressing the power of God in that reasoning and prayer. What's wonderful about that approach is that it has enabled me to see that the degree to which we recognize that we're the expression of an omnipotent God is the degree to which we embody that power. And that power—along with the insight, wisdom, love, whatever is needed, really—is a divine inheritance. It comes to each of us naturally.
I love the story a friend once told me about an English acquaintance who missed his train from the suburbs back into London one evening. This man needed to get into town, yet the train he'd missed had been the last one, so he didn't quite know what to do. But as he stood on the platform, praying, this statement came to him clearly: "I am the child of the King of kings, and I demand royal treatment."
Child of the King of kings! It was such an arresting idea that this man kept repeating it. He simply couldn't stop thinking about it. Soon, the stationmaster came out and expressed concern that the man had missed his train. "Yes," said my friend's acquaintance, "I really do need to get into London tonight."
"Well that's no problem," the stationmaster replied, "because if you look over there you'll see the royal coach. It's going back into London in a few minutes and you will be the only passenger on board. So just go on over and make yourself comfortable."
The man didn't have to do anything other than trust in the authority of that statement—in that statement of his divine birthright, his heritage as a child of a loving Father-Mother. Isn't it the same for each of us? Our primary relationship is our coexistence with divine Love. And this Love comforts us, cares for us, nourishes us—just the way any loving parent would.
Truly, it's knowing this parentage, this spiritual sense of creation, that frees us from a host of problems that a belief of birth matter would pin on man. The lies of heredity and DNA, for example, are overturned as we ground ourselves in the fact that our only heritage is divine. The belief of disability—of incapacity or inability—is shown to be an utter falsehood as we see that we coexist with our divine source. And the biggest lie of all—death itself—is proved powerless as we understand that we have never been born into matter, but are the ideas of Spirit, the expression of Life itself.
In all of this, spiritual sense is key in helping us to recognize, and trust, Truth. Then we'll see all of these lies for what they are—that talking serpent in Genesis 2. Animal magnetism.
Daily defense
Mrs. Eddy was very clear about the need to defend ourselves against animal magnetism's lies, or what she termed "aggressive mental suggestion." It's obvious that these suggestions are very aggressive—they're what tell us on a daily basis that we're material, a certain gender or age. It's the "mental" and "suggestion" parts of that characterization that are perhaps more subtle. But as we recognize that any suggestion of disease is not bodily but mental, we can confront it for what it is—a belief, not a condition or fact. Likewise, as we recognize these claims as suggestions, we can feel empowered by the understanding that suggestion implies choice. That's very different from a demand.
But perhaps the most striking insight I've had into animal magnetism's attempts at manipulation came when I read this imperative from Mrs. Eddy: "It shall be the duty of every member of this Church to defend himself daily against aggressive mental suggestion, and not be made to forget nor to neglect his duty to God, to his Leader, and to mankind" Manual of The Mother Church, p. 42, (my emphasis). In other words, animal magnetism operates by trying to get us to forget or neglect our duty to express God—to be the child, the whole, perfect, complete individual of His creating.
However, we can't be made to act as or be anything less than what we are, nor can animal magnetism make us believe that we're material, living in a finite, gendered form, separate from the unity of one harmonious creation. This is key to remember not just in our efforts to see ourselves as the expression of the infinite, but also in the elevation of male-female relations and interactions to a more universal concept of brotherhood and sisterhood—and to a more spiritual sense of marriage.
" 'Love wedded to its own spiritual idea' " roots us in the spiritual fact that we are all connected, infinitely close, to our Father-Mother God.
A divine revelation
It's not insignificant that Mrs. Eddy's most radical statement about marriage appears not in her chapter on marriage, but in the one titled "The Apocalypse," which explains the Biblical book, Revelation. And this idea of marriage is a revelation. "...thought gently whispers: '...Arise from your false consciousness into the true sense of Love, and behold the Lamb's wife,—Love wedded to its own spiritual idea,' " she wrote. "Then cometh the marriage feast, for this revelation will destroy forever the physical plagues imposed by material sense." Science and Health, pp. 574-575 ."'Love wedded to its own spiritual idea' "—consider that! That's the only definition of marriage there really is, and it takes us right back to the promise of Genesis 1. Divine completeness expressed as man. Male and female. Unified goodness.
Love wedded to its own spiritual idea frees us from all that gender warfare. It makes us immune to the dissatisfaction and fear that lie subtly—but aggressively—beneath the notion that we're in search of a partner, wholeness. It roots us in the spiritual fact that we all, each of us, already include all the qualities of manhood and womanhood in one being because our true marriage means being connected, infinitely close, to our Father-Mother God.
And trust in such divine completeness—in our forever relationship with Love—isn't something beyond our realm of understanding. It is our right now—our divine, eternal birthright.
TCSJ
