Article June 4, 1990 Issue

How we think of ourselves

Real self-awareness isn't self-centered. It's waking up to what God knows us to be.

Marian English

What do you think of yourself? Such a question may seem out of place in Christianity, for self-forgetfulness and unselfish love form the very heart of Christian practice. Yet Paul, for one, urged Christians to examine themselves, and Christian Science reveals the essential link between self-knowledge and salvation. "Know thyself," Mrs. Eddy writes in Science and Health, "and God will supply the wisdom and the occasion for a victory over evil."^{Science and Health, p. 571.}

Christian self-knowledge begins with the profoundly humbling admission of one's need to be saved from his sins, from a false mortal sense of self. This recognition of human inadequacy leads one to Christ, which reveals the "good news" that man is truly the son of God. This revelation awakens a deep hunger to know more of what it means to be the son of God and fosters a willingness to relinquish those characteristics that seem so much a part of us but do not conform to Jesus' example.

Christ Jesus always identified himself as the Son of God. On the strength of that sacred oneness, he healed the sick and sinning, stilled storms, raised the dead. His teachings strongly urge his followers to claim their own divine sonship through the active and ever-increasing expression of such spiritual qualities as love, meekness, receptivity, peacemaking, purity. Such growth in spirituality comes about through great efforts to conquer all that would oppose Christlike character. These regenerating efforts allow us to recognize and claim our own unity with God, and help us see others in the same new, spiritual light. How seriously Mrs. Eddy regarded the Master's teaching on the point of perfect unity with God is evident in a statement she once made to a student: "Unless you fully perceive that you are the child of God, hence perfect, you have no Principle to demonstrate and no rule for its demonstration."^{The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, p. 242.} Understanding man's inseparable, uninterrupted oneness with God is the key to demonstrating man's real identity and alone reveals that which is good and true in individual character.

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