Editorial June 21, 1993 Issue

Your inheritance

Mark Swinney

Communication plays a central role in everyone's life. How information is communicated, when it's communicated, and where it's communicated are almost as important as what is communicated. Most of the time we can pick and choose the information we wish to accept and believe. Yet there are some lines of communication that appear to reach and affect us whether we like it or not. For example, the theory that argues that all of the characteristics of our being are essentially transmitted via DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid). The information we seem to have inherited at conception through DNA molecules looks as if it were secured without any consent on our part.

If man were material, and the physical elements of the universe, including DNA, determined his ultimate makeup, no amount of hope or prayer could truly free us from their influence or bonds. Man, though, isn't material.

As radical and perhaps unfeeling as that may sound, especially to someone facing disease, hereditary or otherwise, it's a practical, liberating truth—a clear understanding of man's spiritual nature is exactly what brings healing. A perception of man's spirituality and the healing of disease go hand in hand. These words from Science and Health by Mary Baker Eddy show us why: "In proportion as matter loses to human sense all entity as man, in that proportion does man become its master" (p. 369). God, divine Spirit and Mind, expresses Himself in spiritual man and the spiritual universe. God is the one true Parent. His expression of Himself—man—is the idea of divine Mind; man's selfhood, originally and eternally, is totally spiritual.