Article November 15, 2010 Issue

A HOLY MESSAGE FOR ALL

BY COLLEEN DOUGLASS

As adherents of Truth, we take the inspired Word of the Bible as our sufficient guide to eternal Life.—Mary Baker Eddy, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 497

"The Bible contains the recipe for all healing" (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 406). That all-encompassing statement by Mary Baker Eddy from her textbook on healing coaxes one to apply the truths found in the Bible to every aspect of the human experience. If people take the choice of the word "all" seriously, no illness, sin, poverty, financial woe, hatred, or even death is beyond the Bible's reach. I find that incredibly comforting, and I believe it with my whole heart. What's more, trusting that the Bible holds such a recipe unites us with every other person who looks to it for answers.

Whether solely interested in the Hebrew Scriptures or more broadly in what Christians call the Old and New Testaments, students of the Bible unite in their solid conviction regarding one God. The Bible consistently preaches monotheism, so it naturally brings us together with every other believer in a solitary God. We share a common ancestry that can be traced—through spiritual ideology if not through the flesh—to Abraham. Science and Health describes Abraham as "Fidelity; faith in the divine Life and in the eternal Principle of being" (p. 579). Through our faith in and faithfulness to God, we find common territory with every Jew, Muslim, and Christian who values that heritage. At one time or another, who hasn't felt like he had to lay his most cherished possession on an altar as a gesture of simple trust that God would guide rightly?