Editorial June 21, 1952 Issue

MAN'S TRUE PARENT

Richard J. Davis

The study of Christian Science reveals the fact that the more one knows of God, the more he knows of the real man and of his own true selfhood. We can only discern man, the image of God, as our understanding of God grows. Indeed in a certain sense the understanding of God is man. Referring to this, Mary Baker Eddy writes in her textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 213), "Of a man it has been said, 'As he thinketh in his heart, so is he;' hence as a man spiritually understandeth, so is he in truth."

In order to learn the reality of man and his true being we turn completely away from the usual human way of thinking. For example, if you ask someone whom he resembles, he is very likely to say, "Oh, people say I am like my mother, and my sister Grace is like my father"—meaning, of course, that he and his sister resemble two other beings, called their father and mother. Yet in Christian Science we see that the Bible is constantly endeavoring to point out to us that God, Spirit, alone is our Father and that He created man exactly like Himself, in the image and likeness of Mind, of Love, of Spirit, and this implies something quite different from what we have ordinarily supposed. It immediately brings to our remembrance the words of Jesus (Matt. 23:9), "Call no man your father upon the earth: for one is your Father, which is in heaven;" and again (Matt. 10:37), "He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me."

Now this does not and cannot imply that we are called upon to desert or ignore our mother, our father, or our family; but it does indicate that spiritual progress demands that we give up that false sense of human relationship which often has in it so much of bondage and suffering, and learn to recognize and demonstrate our true individuality as children, or ideas, of God. One of the most appealing aspects of Christian Science is its teaching of God's motherhood.

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