Article December 13, 1952 Issue

INDIVIDUAL IDENTITY

CLYDE D. SAMSON

The question of individual identity is one which may recur again and again to the student of Christian Science until he finds in its study and revelations an answer that satisfies the intelligent demands of reason. Speaking from personal experience, I may say that Christian Science first appealed to me as a logical religion. Even after it was borne home to me that I could find no flaws in its logic, the following thoughts still persisted: What becomes of the "me" in this process of spiritualization? My ego, my individual identity, what becomes of it? If the premise, the allness of God, presupposes the nothingness of man, if my ego were to become an automaton, even though by some process spiritualized, I could not accept it.

No honest question is ever evaded or left unanswered in Christian Science. In its textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," Mary Baker Eddy states (pp. 264, 265): "The universe of Spirit is peopled with spiritual beings, and its government is divine Science. Man is the offspring, not of the lowest, but of the highest qualities of Mind." And she continues in the next paragraph, "This scientific sense of being, forsaking matter for Spirit, by no means suggests man's absorption into Deity and the loss of his identity, but confers upon man enlarged individuality, a wider sphere of thought and action, a more expansive love, a higher and more permanent peace." These are but examples of many statements which bear upon man's individuality that are made in this book and in her other writings.

The teachings of Christian Science have their basis and authority in the Bible. In Genesis we read (1:27, 31), "God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. ... And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good." Let us take these as our premises and reason from them.

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