FROM THE EDITORS January 16, 2006 Issue

THE GRAVITATIONAL PULL TO LIFE IS MASSIVELY STRONGER THAN ANY DRAW TOWARD DEATH. NOTHING OUTWEIGHS THE URGE TO LIVE.

A WAY OUT OF DEATH FEARS AND DEATH WISHES

"LIFE IS REAL, and death is the illusion." That sentence opens a challenging yet deeply encouraging paragraph in Mary Baker Eddy's textbook on Christian healing, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures (p. 428). It's a message straight from the Comforter that Christ Jesus promised the world, assuring the human family that despite all the evidence to the contrary, God goes on being Life and our lives go on being alive in God's universe.

As Copernicus challenged the human-eye view of an Earth-centered cosmos, Mrs. Eddy confronted the commonly held view that death is the inevitable end of all that lives, and the belief that organic matter is life's medium. She used the term Life in this passage as a Biblically sourced name for God. This always-present, infinite Life sustains and rejoices in all that lives—in all that mirrors God's nature in each of us and in all creation.

The God that Christian Science reveals is a beneficent, loving, comforting Father-Mother; not warlike, death-dealing, or remote in times of need. The New Testament's portrayal of God culminates in John's discerning God to be love, the divine Love in which death and fear cannot exist. "There is no fear in love," John wrote in his first letter, but "perfect love"—the spiritual-intelligence view of life—casts out fear (see I John 4:18).

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