Editorial March 20, 1976 Issue

The Great Departure Point

Geoffrey J. Barratt

The main thing deciding our destination in life is our own spiritual stance, not our cultural background, training courses, or the country we live in.

And our spiritual position—where we place ourselves on the scale of being—is determined as much by where we depart from as by where we head for. "Let us rid ourselves of the belief that man is separated from God, and obey only the divine Principle, Life and Love," Mary Baker Eddy writes in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures. "Here is the great point of departure for all true spiritual growth." Science and Health, p. 91; An inadequate or false departure point (the underlying group of assumptions from which we reason and live) is a main element in an unsatisfying life course.

Nothing is more restrictive and sterile than believing we exist apart from God. No matter how common this assumption, we can challenge it, and we should. Not doing so, we continue dreaming the dream Adam dreamed and eating of the tree of contradictory material knowledge—the knowledge of both good and evil. We dream of detachment and separation from God and carry the weights and burdens so often part and parcel of that dream. "In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return," Gen. 3:19; the Bible records the Lord God as saying to Adam.

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Good Is Undivided
March 20, 1976
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