Article June 12, 2000 Issue

Don't let the filters fool you

Broken bones set and healed through prayer

By Peter Grant Freeland

IF YOU KNOW something about photography, you know the effect filters can have on a photographic image. Simply inserting a piece of colored glass in front of the camera lens, for example, gets amazing results when the print is developed. Other types of filters can cause distortions that make the original object appear totally altered. But the original has not been touched, much less changed.

As in photography, so in life. We are often presented with images, or views, of individuals that seem real but that don't square with their perfect original, as described in the spiritual account of creation in the first chapter of Genesis. We see people suffering from sickness or loss, for instance, and yet there was no mention of such things in this creation, where God made everything. Instead, as this chapter explains, "male and female" are created "in the image of God," totally good (see verses 27 and 31).

The second chapter of Genesis, however, describes a vastly different concept of creation, material from the outset, with a man being made from dust. Because these two accounts are diametrically opposed to each other, both cannot be true. My study of the Bible and of Mary Baker Eddy's major work, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, has led me to conclude that the first account is the true one. The second account is, in a sense, like a filter that produces distorted images but never touches the original.

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