Article March 13, 1989 Issue

Necessary man

The modern view of man can make one feel pretty insignificant—a speck in the universe. But Christian Science shows there's much more—infinitely more—to man than meets the eyes.

William S. Warren

If the sun were suddenly to black out, observers on the earth could still see the sun for about nine minutes because it would take that long for the blackout to reach the earth. The sun's rays are the visual evidence that the sun exists.

I find this illustration is helpful in seeing just how significant each of us really is—and in learning something of the relation of man to God. As God's spiritual likeness, man is necessary to God because man is the very evidence of God's being. God makes Himself known through man, His witness and expression, and thus God and the real man are immediately and eternally coexistent. This man, God's likeness, is the product of God, and so is spiritual not material, good not evil. God gives us our real, only, and lasting identity.

If God didn't express Himself through man, God wouldn't be, just as man wouldn't be. Mrs. Eddy, a deep student of the Bible, explains: "Separated from man, who expresses Soul, Spirit would be a nonentity; man, divorced from Spirit, would lose his entity. But there is, there can be, no such division, for man is coexistent with God."^{Science and Health, pp. 477–478.}

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