Editorial March 5, 1977 Issue

Governed by God, Not by Genes

Naomi Price

We are what our creator makes us to be. We possess what our creator causes us to have. We act as our creator impels us to act. And what we are and have and do is invariably in accord with the nature of the creator. "Like produces like," as Mary Baker Eddy says. And she continues: "In natural history, the bird is not the product of a beast. In spiritual history, matter is not the progenitor of Mind."^{Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 551;}

On this basis of like producing like we can reason scientifically and learn the nature of our true being, our substance, and how we should expect to act. We can know what is the real influence on our characters and our behavior and aim to live up to what we now understand. But before we can come to any proper conclusion about ourselves we need to understand the nature of our creator, and on this point we are presented with a choice.

Some say the creator is matter—that material genes are responsible for the perpetuation and evolution of the species—and that creation is both material and spiritual, subject to discord. Others say God, divine Spirit or Mind, made all that was made, and that the product is wholly spiritual and eternally good. It is this latter premise that the Bible presents as the fact and that Christian Scientists adopt. "Hath not one God created us?"^{Mal. 2:10;} is the consistent message of the Bible. And Mrs. Eddy tells us in the Christian Science textbook: "To grasp the reality and order of being in its Science, you must begin by reckoning God as the divine Principle of all that really is. Spirit, Life, Truth, Love, combine as one,—and are the Scriptural names for God."^{Science and Health, p. 275;}