Article May 1, 1965 Issue

Overcoming the Grasshopper Concept

[Of Special Interest to Young Men and Women]

GARY JOHN JEWKES

In the thirteenth chapter of Numbers we find an interesting account given of Moses sending a group of men to spy out and report on the land of Canaan. The news that they brought back to the Hebrew leader was discouraging (verse 33), "There we saw the giants, the sons of Anak, which come of the giants: and we were in our own sight as grasshoppers, and so we were in their sight." How characteristic of human experience is this finite conception of man!

Mortal belief claims that man originates in matter and is subject to material limitations. This false view of man is one of the basic causes of disease and trouble. Prevalent theories claim that there are degrees of intelligence; that, depending on hereditary and environmental influences, some men are superior and others inferior. These views are contrary to scientific Christianity, since Jesus himself said (John 14:12), "He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also;and greater works than these shall he do."

Man can no more be subject to degrees of intelligence than can God, since man is the boundless manifestation of Mind, divine intelligence. Mrs. Eddy writes in Science and Health (p. 258), "God expresses in man the infinite idea forever developing itself, broadening and rising higher and higher from a boundless basis." As we see ourselves and our fellowmen more clearly as infinite ideas having spontaneity of thought and rising "higher and higher from a boundless basis," we exchange the grasshopper concept of man for our spiritual identity as the expression of God.

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