Article September 25, 1978 Issue

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STIG KIÆR CHRISTIANSEN

Desiring something, setting yourself goals to be reached in the near or not-so-near future, aiming at providing changes in your own situation or in the affairs of your community, your nation, or all mankind—these are natural inclinations. Our wants, goals, and aims may be good or bad, selfish or unselfish—like all human thinking and acting. But most people, whether out of discontent with the present or because of more positive motives, have something they hope to reach or accomplish.

According to Christian Science, man is already the perfect image of God, Spirit. His identity is spiritual, always complete, as changeless as his Father. Man, therefore, has no change to fear and no change to wish for.

To mortal sense, and to human consciousness more or less relying on the false evidence of the material senses, the changeless perfection of spiritual existence is, to say the least, less evident and less easy to understand. Misguided—misguided, that is, by the aggressive suggestions of mortal mind—we don't understand true existence. To mortal sense life seems to be marked by sin and mortality. Through cultivating our God-given spiritual sense, however, we can learn to understand true existence—and we should aim to do so. We owe this effort to God and to our neighbor. We owe it to ourselves. In Science and Health Mrs. Eddy writes: "Man understands spiritual existence in proportion as his treasures of Truth and Love are enlarged. Mortals must gravitate Godward, their affections and aims grow spiritual,—they must near the broader interpretations of being, and gain some proper sense of the infinite,—in order that sin and mortality may be put off."^{Science and Health, p. 265;}

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