Article November 3, 1986 Issue

Heredity doesn't have to rule

How much of what we face in life do we try to trace back to the past, to our parents, to our ancestry? Isn't it time to look, instead, to our spiritual heritage?

Joe Eller

It appears that heredity is growing more greedy these days. It used to be that heredity got credit primarily for such things as someone's gender or his or her height or the color of eyes or hair. Now more and more people are accepting the assumption that one's entire physical and psychological makeup is fundamentally locked into the gene structure. It's not only the outward physical traits but also intelligence, susceptibility to illness, quality of the teeth, emotional stability, and on and on.

It's something to consider seriously, this greedy theory of heredity. Are our individualities and well-being locked into it? And those of our children too?

Sometimes one can search long for a concept of man that is not buried in biology. The truths taught in Christian Science reverse this burial, uplift the concept of man, and reveal him as the child of the infinite Spirit, God. This God is the everlasting Father-Mother, the creator of the universe, including man. Man made in God's likeness is His complete spiritual idea; man reflects the wholeness of the divine Mind, and he expresses the health of this Mind.

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