IDENTITY AND INDIVIDUALITY
"God is the Life, or intelligence, which forms and preserves the individuality and identity of animals as well as of men," Mary Baker Eddy writes on page 550 of the textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures." Here is a valuable revelation of the nature of true being: God's creation has both identity and individuality. This is significant, for identity without individuality would imply a creation composed of an infinite number of ideas without distinguishing qualities.
But this is impossible, for as Christian Science reveals, each identity has individuality as part of its essential nature. There are no duplicates in God's creation. While each one of us reflects all of God's qualities, so that in Truth no one expresses more of the divine Mind than another, yet each one of us has his own individualized way of manifesting Life, Truth, and Love. This individual manifestation is the very wonder of divine Mind's consummate creative power.
You and I and everyone are in reality the individual expressions of divine Love. Not only do we exist as particular entities—reflections of the Mind which is God—but we also possess instantly recognizable elements of individual character. God's plan is infinitely varied and endlessly beautiful, and He causes it to be expressed.
The understanding of our true individuality and identity in Christian Science leads on to interesting and valuable concepts. Going further, we discover that each individual in God's universe is harmoniously related to every other one. Under the eternally good law of divine Love creation expresses itself in freedom and fullness, and each individual enjoys a perfect relationship with every other individual. Moreover, there can be no lonely separateness in infinity, nor does man exist as a solitary worshiper of God in frigid isolation.
How do we know this? By reason of Mrs. Eddy's remarkable and revealing statement which is found on pages 576 and 577 of Science and Health where she discusses the Jewish concept of God as Jehovah: "This human sense of Deity yields to the divine sense, even as the material sense of personality yields to the incorporeal sense of God and man as the infinite Principle and infinite idea,—as one Father with His universal family, held in the gospel of Love."
"One Father with His universal family, held in the gospel of Love"! Here is the positive assurance that we dwell in God's universe as a family of spiritual ideas. What closer bond can there be than that of a family in which divine Love is the family tie—the Principle of unity! In the tenderness of the term family we see that as God's children we can never dwell in disunity. Rather, as we discern spiritual being we perceive a closer conscious contact with all true identity and individuality, and the beauty and perfection of all identity are progressively seen and appreciated.
What is it that depicts disruption, confusion, division, and strife among men? It is error, mortal mind, animal magnetism. Whatever produces discord in human affairs is simply a part of the false picture of creation. God's creation is one, and all identity and individuality is held in spiritual oneness. It is important to recognize this truth because mortal mind cannot conceive of differences of individuality except in terms of conflict, while the divine Mind beholds infinite individuality in terms of beauty and concord.
To make this great spiritual fact practical we must hold fast to our understanding of the divinity of real being. Mortal mind would try to keep us buried in a world of material sense, where identity is believed to be physical personality, and individuality often to be personal peculiarity. It would sometimes and all too often seem that identity is recognized as individual by reason of aggressive negative qualities. But a tyrant expresses true individuality very slightly, and willfulness is not strength of character at all. A mortal with a flair for the erratic and sensational does not express true identity's genius. Real individualism reflects the grace of God, good, and is recognizable only as the manifestation of Soul's lovely creativeness.
We see the beauty and perfection of true individuality through the spiritual qualities with which divine Mind endows our own consciousness. What a joy it is to know that we can understand God through His infinite elements, and that our own expression of them is unduplicated in all creation. That is why we are so essential in the infinite oneness of divine Love's plan.
How many "lost identities"— mental wanderers—there are in the world today through their failure to see the spiritual reality of man's individuality! With that penetration so characteristic of him, Shakespeare wrote,
Self-love, my liege, is not so vile a sin
As self-neglecting.
Paul in his first letter to Timothy warns of this subtle claim of error with the gentle reminder (I Tim. 4:14 ), "Neglect not the gift that is in thee, which was given thee by prophecy."
Christian Science, revealing the perpetual freshness of true identity and individuality, erases the illusion of material personality. Those who have been victimized by sin; those who have made willful and unwise choices; those who have gambled with luck instead of relying upon unfailing divine Principle; those burdened with the injustice of human circumstance—all can find freedom and a joyous view of unfolding divine Life through the perception of their identity as Mind-formed and Mind-sustained. Then appears the truth of being, which reveals individuality as above the commonplace routine of materialism's mediocrity.
Jesus said (John 12:32 ). "And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me." This tells us that as our sense of identity and individuality rises from the material to the spiritual, the grand purposes of divine Life appear. Then serious purpose, useful work, unselfish service, buoyant happiness bring fruition and reward.
Does the lifting up of our true nature as God's likeness deprive us of anything substantial, useful, or needful? With the assurance of divine law and a long career devoted to successfully serving mankind, our beloved Leader writes (Science and Health, p. 265 ). "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."
