Article October 30, 1989 Issue

"The 'male and female' of God's creating"

How do you identify yourself? Do you know yourself Spiritually?

Barbara R. Pettis

Slick advertising, popular movies and magazines, and well-known celebrities are offering, more than ever in recent memory, disturbing and provocative images of femininity and masculinity. Men and women are very often being portrayed as mere sexual beings whose lives are determined by physical circumstances mostly outside their control.

In contrast, Science and Health by Mrs. Eddy, echoing the Bible, declares: "Let the 'male and female' of God's creating appear.... Let us rejoice that we are subject to the divine 'powers that be.' Such is the true Science of being."^{Science and Health, p. 249.}

The first chapter in the Bible defines the origin and identity of men and women as spiritual—as being in God, whom Christ Jesus described as Spirit.^{See John 4:24 .} It says plainly, "God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them."^{Gen. 1:27.} This creation reflects the one infinite Father-Mother God, in whom masculine and feminine identities alike are blessed with dominion. What joyous liberty, purity, and completeness are found in this bestowal of God's loving goodness!