Editorial February 27, 1995 Issue

Thwart the thief of life!

Barbara M. Vining

I've been told that as a child I was constantly asking questions about everything. Children do that. They want to understand, not just believe. That's excellent (even though sometimes considered annoying)! In fact, seeking to understand, rather than just to believe, is a good life-practice. It can keep us from being robbed of ideas that are vital to our well-being—even to our life. For that reason, the demand for understanding is especially important when it comes to the subject of man's eternal relation to God.

When I was five years old, I was told one day that my grandfather, whom I loved, had died, and that his soul had gone to heaven. I don't remember feeling sad; I seem to have grasped something of the truth that man has an immortal connection with a loving God. But to my child-thought a "soul" was part of a foot, and that's what stuck with me—that part of my grandfather's foot had gone to heaven. There were a few things about this that puzzled me.

Every now and then the subject would come to my thought. My most immediate concern became that I had forgotten which part of the foot. One day I just had to know, so I asked one of my parents, "Is it the sole or the heel of the foot that goes to heaven?" I don't recall the response, but I do know that from then on I was no longer hung up on feet; I was curious about man's immortality, which remained pretty much a mystery to me until I began in my late teens to augment my study of the Bible with the study of Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer of Christian Science.

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