Article May 14, 1979 Issue

Man's original innocence

NANCY H. MINTER

There is an attractiveness about innocence. I remember watching some five-year-olds in a school play. The entire audience was caught up in the children's joy, spontaneity, and innocence. Later that same evening I watched a television program about children in detention facilities—hardened and afraid. What had happened? Where was the innocence that at one time they had shared with the youngsters in the play?

Perhaps we need to take a deeper look at innocence. It certainly isn't naiveté. The world views innocence as a fleeting and weak quality—of no help at all in getting one through this rough world. The innocent, it is said, are easy targets for evil, especially young people today. We read about their becoming victims of pornography, criminality, physical abuse. We hear of a rising tide of child crime and of an increasing number of teen-age pregnancies. Many people are concerned about these trends and are searching for answers.

Christian Science presents a radical approach to the solution of these complex problems, a spiritual approach that finds its authority in the Bible. This Science begins by challenging the belief that innocence is weakness. In fact, it teaches the power of purity and innocence when their divine source is recognized. For, according to the prophet Habakkuk, God Himself is "of purer eyes than to behold evil."^{Hab. 1:13;} And Genesis 1 tells us God has created man in His image and declared man to be good—in other words, free from sin, like Himself. It is the account of creation in Genesis 2—an allegory—that introduces the notion of evil, of man's fall from perfection. The first account presents spiritual perfection and completeness—original innocence; the second, physicality and original sin. One or the other is true; both cannot be. Christian Science accepts the first account and proves it to be factual by destroying whatever contradicts man's original innocence and well-being in the same way Christ Jesus did—through the understanding and living of spiritual truth.