Article January 16, 1978 Issue

Be yourself: spiritual and perfect

HAROLD BERNARD JORDAN

"Just be yourself" is the advice often given to someone starting a new job or meeting people for the first time—or dealing with members of his own family, with teen-agers in particular. What-ever the situation, such advice seems logical and reassuring. But it can and often does fail to solve the many complex situations we encounter in our lives. Without a spiritual understanding of identity, it is not always easy to discover and define just who we are and what our real selfhood is.

Mrs. Eddy answers the question "What is man?" in Science and Health. She says, in part, "The Scriptures inform us that man is made in the image and likeness of God." In the same paragraph she tells us, "Man is spiritual and perfect; and because he is spiritual and perfect, he must be so understood in Christian Science."^{Science and Health, p. 475;} We see, then, that the material body has no existence outside our human concept of it. Man is just as much the image of God now as he ever will be, because he lives in the eternal, spiritual creation of God. God, divine Mind, does not know you and me as material persons, possessing physical bodies and private addresses where He can locate us. He knows us as spiritual ideas.

When we understand this, it is not difficult or impossible to be what we really are—God's man. One needs to cherish and develop spiritual qualities in order that he may evidence the perfect man.

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