Article October 8, 1984 Issue

God, language, and us

CAROLYN F. RUFFIN

When it comes to the deeper questions in our lives, we don't want words to get in the way. We want to feel that we're understood right away, and that we, in turn, can understand.

That goes as much for our relationship to God as for our relationship with people. When we need healing or courage or hope, we want to feel that words don't get in the way of our understanding. You might say we want to feel that we and God speak the same language.

What is that language? What conveys the deepest insights into the one fundamental cause called "God"? Mrs. Eddy, who in the middle years of her life undertook a profound search to understand God better, called it "the language of Spirit." In the Christian Science textbook, Science and Health, she writes, "God is Spirit; therefore the language of Spirit must be, and is, spiritual." In the next paragraph she says, "Ear hath not heard, nor hath lip spoken, the pure language of Spirit."^{Science and Health, p. 117.}