Editorial November 6, 2017 Issue

You are essential!

Kim Crooks Korinek

You are needed. In fact, you are essential. Why? Because Life and Love, synonyms for God, are essential, and you are the evidence of Life and Love. The plain point is that God—as infinite Life and Love—must be expressed, and you are that expression. Author Mary Baker Eddy takes it a step further when she writes in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures: “Man as the offspring of God, as the idea of Spirit, is the immortal evidence that Spirit is harmonious and man eternal” (p. 29). You are worthy and as essential to God as a child to a parent, or as a song to a singer. It is simply not possible to have one without the other. And by understanding more of the fundamental and essential nature of God, you are automatically understanding more about the fundamental and essential nature of yourself as God’s own child.

A spiritually inspired view of the Bible portrays an evolving understanding of what God is, ending with the New Testament telling us that “God is love” (I John 4:8) “with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning” (James 1:17). Christ Jesus constantly points to God as our Father, the one creator—all-loving and always present. Christian Science, based on Christ Jesus’ teachings, explains that man (and this includes woman) is spiritual, derived from Spirit, God, invariable Love. To open our thought to understand God as an infinite ocean of divine Love that yearns, cares for, guides, and protects all His creation is to open our thought to a life abundant in peace, startling creativity, robust health, and resilience.

God is the divine Esse, and as the offspring or outcome of God, we reflect the essence of Love, the essential vitality of Life. We are the indispensable part without which God could not exist. “God, without the image and likeness of Himself, would be a nonentity, or Mind unexpressed. He would be without a witness or proof of His own nature” (Science and Health, p. 303).