Article June 7, 1947 Issue

Being and Doing

INEZ FIELD DAMON

How concerned most of us are with doing things and planning things to be done! Do fatigue, futility, and lack of time for proper praying sometimes seem to be present? If so, it might be well to consider whether an overdeveloped sense of doing may not be accompanied by an underdeveloped sense of being. At such a point it is well to remember that in the account of God's creation in the first chapter of Genesis the writer first brings out what God commands man to be, then what He commands man to do.

The entirety of being is indicated in the fulfillment of these two commands. In the familiar verses 26 and 27 we read: "And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him." Here is God's command to man defining what he is to be—namely, His image and likeness. Man must be Godlike. Verse 28 carries the further command to do: "And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth."

Christian Science bases its teachings squarely upon these commands as to what man is made to be and to do. First, he must express God's attributes and qualities and thus have the dominion of spiritual understanding over all of God's work. This understanding, in the degree that we gain it, gives us dominion over every material belief. Since God is Spirit, man must be essentially and entirely spiritual. God is always manifesting His own qualities, and man is individually expressing them. Man's being is the reflection of God's being.

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