[The above is substantially the text of the program released for broadcast the weekend of December 14–16 in the radio series, "The Bible Speaks to You," heard internationally over more than 800 stations. This is one of the weekly programs produced by the Christian Science Committee on Publication, 107 Falmouth Street, Boston 15, Massachusetts.]
RADIO PROGRAM No. 37 - What Are Children Made Of?
HOST: Remember the old nursery rhyme about what little girls are made of and what little boys are made of? The girls were supposed to be made of "sugar and spice and all things nice," while the ingredients of little boys were considerably less appealing! Over the years many theories have been devised for measuring, analyzing, and classifying children. Yet to many parents—and to others, too—the job of understanding children is still a big challenge.
One widely accepted view of children is drawn by S. R. Slavson in his book, "Child Psychotherapy." He says, "... the child is impelled by the laws of biologic and organic growth and by his psychic evolvement, as well as by the resentments and hostilities built up in the course of his brief life." [Columbia University Press, New York, New York.]
It's not surprising that many parents wonder if this troubled view of the child is really the whole story. What are your comments?
SPEAKER: What are children made of? To find the most satisfying answer to this question, let's ask ourselves, "Who really made them?" And in what better place can we find the answer to that than in the pages of the Bible?
"The Spirit of God hath made me, and the breath of the Almighty hath given me life" (Job 33:4).
"Thus saith the Lord, the Holy One of Israel, and his Maker, Ask me of things to come concerning my sons, and concerning the work of my hands command ye me. I have made the earth, and created man upon it. ... I have raised him up in righteousness, and I will direct all his ways" (Isa. 45:11–13).
"Ye are my witnesses, saith the Lord, and my servant whom I have chosen." "This people have I formed for myself; they shall shew forth my praise" (Isa. 43:10, 21).
"Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?" (I Cor. 3:16.)
"For in him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring" (Acts 17:28).
HOST: The Bible presents a radically different picture of children than the one often held these days.
SPEAKER: Yes, I'm sure that's true. But to the Christian Scientists, the purely material view of the child—the physical and psychological view—hides his real nature and origin. We have to see him as he really is—as spiritual, not material.
Man is made to bear witness to God's nature—to our heavenly Father's goodness, strength, perfection. When the Bible is spiritually understood, we gain a better, a higher, view of creation than what we can ever see or measure physically.
The Master, Christ Jesus, said, "Call no man your father upon the earth: for one is your Father, which is in heaven" (Matt. 23:9). So in Christian Science we acknowledge infinite Spirit, divine Mind, as our only true Father—as the child's only real cause and creator. We reason that in reality the child is spiritual, not material. His nature reflects only the perfect purity, strength, freedom, of Spirit—the intelligence and harmony of eternal Mind. This means that actually the child is a spiritual idea, not a physical organism. His true character is patterned after the divine nature, not after physicality. It expresses spiritual law, not what is called biological law. Because God is all-powerful divine Love, infinite good, the child's real identity is the likeness of this perfect Love. He is conscious of being loved, comforted, cared for, governed by divine Love at all times.
Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, writes in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 63): "In Science man is the offspring of Spirit. The beautiful, good, and pure constitute his ancestry. His origin is not, like that of mortals, in brute instinct, nor does he pass through material conditions prior to reaching intelligence. Spirit is his primitive and ultimate source of being; God is his Father, and Life is the law of his being."
HOST: Can you explain how those statements can help parents with their children?
SPEAKER: When you acknowledge that God has already made the child's real nature complete and perfect, you begin to see that emotional disorders or mental deficiencies are not naturally part of his make-up. What is natural to him, what is basic to his character, is the true and worthy qualities of thought that come to him from God. See divine Mind as the child's real parent, and you help him to understand this too. Quietly realize that divine Love alone governs the child, and you see the mighty healing influence of God in every phase of the child's development. Divine Love melts hostility, fear, jealousy, resentment. It removes conflict. It brings right adjustment and replaces discord with harmony.
The most wonderful thing about this is that as we see the child in the right light, we gain a deeper understanding of ourselves. This makes us better parents. Hold to the understanding that we too are the likeness of God, and we bring to light our God-given patience, tenderness, wisdom, justice—qualities we need so much in the home. Let God govern our motives, our affections, our actions, and tension and harshness and fear fall away.
You have an example there of the way that spiritual understanding can help parents with their children. It's the experience of the mother in Illinois.
HOST: Yes. She says: "When our little girl's second teeth came in they were very crooked and very crowded. The dentist who had cleaned them said she needed to wear a brace. This really roused me. We were Christian Scientists, ans we'd seen many healings in our family through the power of prayer. And we decided we would rely completely on God for the healing.
"Some words from one of the psalms came to me, 'The Lord will perfect that which concerneth me' (Ps. 138:8). Also this statement from Science and Health by Mrs. Eddy: 'What God cannot do, man need not attempt' (p. 231). This gave our family the confidence we needed to be consistent in our prayers and to expect perfect results.
"We asked a Christian Science practitioner for prayerful help too. One of the things the practitioner asked was that we study the Ten Commandments. So we made a list of the spiritual qualities we found in the Commandments; for instance, obedience, promptness, willingness, honesty, order, consideration, joy. Each morning my daughter and I went over this list, talked about the Commandments and about some quality we thought was an important one for her to straighten out in her experience. Each night she would grade herself as to how well she thought she had done that day in expressing these Godlike qualities and would decide which ones she needed to work on more.
"My thoughts needed some straightening out too. I'd been thinking that four children are a lot and that this one was the oldest and could take care of herself instead of having to have individual love and attention. So I tried to see each one of the children as a child of God who couldn't be deprived of anything good.
"As we filled our thoughts with the clearer understanding of God and of man's relationship to Him, the teeth problem just faded away. Within a year her teeth were beautifully straight."
