Genealogy and family trees command much attention. Human pride readily claims admirable ancestral traits such as artistic talent but would disown so-called inherited faults and tendencies toward disease. We cannot, however, accept favorable genealogical findings and reject the unfavorable. If we believe in the first, we will find ourselves automatically subject to the second.

The search into human ancestry leads us back to the scriptural allegory of Adam and Eve, which includes this statement: "Out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil."¹

In Science and Health Mrs. Eddy's explanation of this passage begins: "The previous and more scientific record of creation declares that God made 'every plant of the field before it was in the earth.' This opposite declaration, this statement that life issues from matter, contradicts the teaching of the first chapter,—namely, that all Life is God." And in the next paragraph we read: "The 'tree of life' stands for the idea of Truth, and the sword which guards it is the type of divine Science. The 'tree of knowledge' stands for the erroneous doctrine that the knowledge of evil is as real, hence as God-bestowed, as the knowledge of good."²

Genealogical theories are branches of the "tree of knowledge"; they are based on the supposition that life is material. Man's real source, God, is revealed by the "tree of life," the idea of Truth. What good is it to build on a premise known to be erroneous, since whatever conclusions one reaches must necessarily be false? But what incalculable benefit it is to search the tree of life to find man's original, eternal source in Spirit!

The Adam myth claims not only that man originates in matter but that he exists in matter and is consequently subject to material conditions. It asserts that man proceeds from man, that there is more than one creator. It would make us believe that both good and bad qualities of character are transmitted from mortal parents to their offspring.

This material concept of being also assigns each of its offspring to a specific race and nationality; identifies each as having a limited amount of intelligence, education, and social experience; and allots to each one fixed intellectual patterns as well as inherited physical characteristics and weaknesses. This theory leaves the individual with the prospect of spending his lifetime trying to overcome unwanted tendencies and is a bland denial of the fact that man is the pure conception of Mind, the spiritual image of God.

Christian Science leads one to the study not of a family tree but of the tree of life; this study reveals man to be the reflection of the one divine Life, thereby exposing genealogy as only a mortal belief.

The first step is to identify oneself with Spirit, good, instead of with a material body and ancestry. Science and Health states: "In Science man is the offspring of Spirit. The beautiful, good, and pure constitute his ancestry. His origin is not, like that of mortals, in brute instinct, nor does he pass through material conditions prior to reaching intelligence. Spirit is his primitive and ultimate source of being; God is his Father, and Life is the law of his being."³

To the extent we understand existence to have one source, Spirit, we are released from beliefs of heredity and limitation. We can prove that God, good, is the only creator and that in reality each individual has never been touched by birth, flesh, or evil. We can demonstrate man's spiritual completeness, joy, and purpose. Science removes the veil of matter and discloses man's eternal status as the work of the one Life, God—safe from the mortal beliefs of disease, decline, and death.

Christ Jesus, who understood himself to be the Son of God, proved that man's only ancestor is God. He counseled his disciples, "Call no man your father upon the earth: for one is your Father, which is in heaven."⁴

Before Jesus' healing of a man blind from birth, his disciples questioned, "Master, who did sin, this man, or his parents, that he was born blind?" Jesus replied, "Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents: but that the works of God should be made manifest in him."⁵

In Miscellaneous Writings Mrs. Eddy answers the question, "Does Christian Science set aside the law of transmission, prenatal desires, and good or bad influences on the unborn child?" Her reply includes this statement: "Whatever is real is right and eternal; hence the immutable and just law of Science, that God is good only, and can transmit to man and the universe nothing evil, or unlike Himself. For the innocent babe to be born a lifelong sufferer because of his parents' mistakes or sins, were sore injustice. Science sets aside man as a creator, and unfolds the eternal harmonies of the only living and true origin, God."⁶

Man has not two backgrounds, one material, one spiritual. He is and always will be spiritual. As we accept God as our one Parent, we begin to see that substance is solely good because we inherit all that we have from Him. This inheritance includes spiritual wholeness, purity, perfection, unending faculties, unlimited intelligence. It precludes disease, weaknesses, sinful tendencies. Evil, being the supposititious absence of good, is nothing and so cannot possibly be transmitted from one individual to another.

We need to search for our real source and self—God and His spiritual reflection. We cannot find them, however, by looking to matter and family trees. As the idea of Spirit, man can be seen only by spiritual sense.

Each of us can free himself from the influence of belief in genealogical theories by disbelieving them and discovering that his real identity is already established in eternal Life.

One finds the right answers by searching the right tree—the tree of Life.