Article April 6, 1987 Issue

Accepting only what God gives

To understand our real heritage, we should push beyond family histories.

Janet Doud Driskill

I Had been glancing through a family history and noticed an odd remark: so many of my ancestors had been deaf that it could almost be called a family characteristic. Because of what I had been learning in Christian Science of the spiritual truth of man's nature, my response was immediate: "I don't have to accept this." I refused to believe that my heritage was anything but spiritual and good.

Up to that point I had not been aware of a hearing difficulty, but an incident occurred that showed me there must have been a need for healing. I was walking through an alley downtown when I heard the sound of tires crunching on gravel. Thinking a car was right behind me, I moved over to the side of the alley and looked back. The car was more than half a block away. The level of my hearing had obviously become noticeably more acute than the level to which I had apparently grown accustomed. In the years since, I have continued to have exceptionally acute hearing. How could refusal to accept a supposed family trait make a difference? My protest was based on spiritual truth, the truth Christ Jesus illustrated in his healing work, including his healings of the deaf and the blind. Jesus said, "If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed; and ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free."^{John 8:31, 32.}

But how does one know what is true? The Bible, studied along with the Christian Science textbook, Science and Health by Mrs. Eddy, has helped many recognize the practical healing truths that Jesus taught and demonstrated. For instance, there is the truth that all things were made by the Word of God and nothing was made without it. There is the truth that God made man in His image and likeness and that everything He made was good. These deeply spiritual truths showed me that my real origin was God, Spirit, and that my faculties had to be spiritual and unchanging; I was really God's likeness, or expression. Actually, all that is true proceeds from God, because God is Truth, the source and substance of all that really exists.

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