Editorial June 12, 1976 Issue

Shedding Our Stereotypes

Geoffrey J. Barratt

Need life be like the screening of a set of color slides again and again—same scenes, same angles, same people, maybe some out-of-focus shots? No. Truth, or God—and consequently, man, Truth's outcome—isn't locked into fixed, dead patterns. And we can enjoy lives illustrative of this truth.

To progress spiritually and become effective Christian Science healers, we should quickly discard the rigid molds of uninspired human reasoning. Playing host to stock views of mankind and human experience—forcing events, relationships, and people into a small range of tiny pigeonholes—doesn't help others, and it imprisons us. Here is a basis from which to leap out of rutted thinking: "God expresses in man the infinite idea forever developing itself, broadening and rising higher and higher from a boundless basis."^{ Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 258;} Mary Baker Eddy, an eminently unstereotyped thinker, gives us this vast concept of man and breaks mortal molds with liberating, healing effect.

One central stereotype to break is the view that man is a terrestrial organism. Cognizing through Science that man is Life's spiritual idea, we can do this. Until then, a dull, finite sense of man as mortal will be perpetuated, exposing us to sickness and disappointment.

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