Editorial January 5, 1974 Issue

Breaking Bogus Images

Geoffrey J. Barratt

Idolatry may have only an old-fashioned theological connotation to many people, but in fact image-making and image-worship have for many centuries sidetracked human beings and wasted much of their time and energy. They do so today. But our refusing to be idolaters can have progressive and profitable consequences. Christian Science explains how not to be misled or self-deluded.

A man-made image is an imitation, often a dissimulation, a pretense. Some individuals aspire to conform to a particular image in order to get on in their business or community, or even in their church. When our thoughts and acts are lowered by a bogus image as that constructed, for example, by a less-than-honest advertising or public relations campaign—then we're idolaters, although perhaps unwittingly, because of the authority we've given to the material image.

It's the divine image that should concern us, man made in the divine image, in the likeness of God. But, "Finite sense," Mary Baker Eddy notes, "has no true appreciation of infinite Principle, God, or of His infinite image or reflection, man."^{Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 300;} The important thing is that we recognize in this infinite image our only selfhood, rather than try to project a mortal image of conformity to some set of superficial personal values. Realizing ourselves to be made in the divine image helps us humanly to be natural, free, and relaxed, whereas the effort to construct and project a forced image not only misleads others but strains and deceives us. It does not further sound relations with others or our meaningful success in life.