Editorial April 14, 1986 Issue

Is the snake trying to tell you you're lonely?

BARBARA-JEAN STINSON

Snakes can't talk. Or can they? In the creation story of Adam and Eve, a talking snake, a serpent, seems to play a most important role. Through subtle persuasion the serpent convinces Eve that she and Adam will be much happier if they will only eat the fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

Most of us know the story found in the Bible, in Genesis. Eve did listen to the snake. She and Adam did eat the fruit the serpent recommended, and they suffered from the misery and shame of having done so.

Today it often seems that we too are tempted to eat of the serpent's offering—to think that what it has to give us is more desirable than the joy of letting God satisfy our deepest needs and desires. But if we look deeply into this account, we'll see that the story of the snake and all it promises is an allegory showing how the carnal mind—an apparent opposite of God—would attempt to keep the truth from us. This truth, as revealed through Christian Science, is the great reality of man's relationship to God. It includes the fact that loneliness is not an actual condition of our true being, because each one of us is in reality God's spiritual idea, man, the incorporeal male and female of His creating. As God's reflection, man includes all good.

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