Editorial September 25, 1978 Issue

The right definition of ourselves

Geoffrey J. Barratt

To define ourselves rightly is crucial. It affects our lives, careers, relationships, health. To define ourselves and others as mortal is a mistake, and a destructive one. But to draw our view of man from Christian Science is healing and reformational. The scientific truth is we're defined—formed and caused—by God, immortal Spirit.

Until we adopt a spiritually scientific sense of God and man we define ourselves inadequately or wrongly. We don't question the picture the mortal senses give of us. We believe we're defined by such things as physical appearance, job, race, wealth, physique, sex. We believe we're analyzable by psychology and medicine. Looking at ourselves in such ways, we define others wrongly too.

The concept of man pervasive throughout all the writings of our Leader, Mary Baker Eddy, is radical and revolutionary. Adding to a potent reference to man in her previous paragraph, she writes in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures: "Continuing our definition of man, let us remember that harmonious and immortal man has existed forever, and is always beyond and above the mortal illusion of any life, substance, and intelligence as existent in matter. This statement is based on fact, not fable."^{Science and Health, p. 302;} This is a view of man that has not been held with such scientific clarity since Christ Jesus saw man in a purely spiritual way, two millenniums ago.