Editorial November 5, 1984 Issue

Did God give us free will?

BARBARA-JEAN STINSON

To many people the belief that God gave us our own free will, to choose whether or not to obey Him, is comforting. It seems to explain the contradiction between a good creator and a sinning person. If we're to blame for our own sins, so the theory goes, then God cannot be held responsible—and that leaves the concept of a good God intact. But it also raises many questions about His ultimate responsibility for creating such a vulnerable man in the first place.

Christian Science brings a different perspective to the subject. It reveals, and it enables us to demonstrate, that man is not a sinning mortal. He is the incorporeal reflection of God. Man is God's, Spirit's, own likeness. God did not create a man who has a fallible mind of his own with which to choose sin. God, good, is the only Mind there is, and man reflects this divine Mind. God is the source of man's infinite individuality and freedom.

Although these spiritual facts do not seem at all true to the physical senses, they are the divine law of our real and only identity. When we begin to acknowledge what we actually are—God's very expression—and start to demonstrate the nature of God, we are recognizing to some degree that we actually dwell in divine Spirit. Then we're better able to exercise good judgment and consistently subordinate human will to the divine. The flesh has less and less control over us as we see how natural and normal it really is for us to express and be attracted to true goodness.

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