In the Christian Science Bible Lesson May 2, 2011 Issue

Waking to the nature of the Christ

For the lesson titled "Adam and Fallen Man" from May 2–8, 2011

Michael Hamilton

This Bible Lesson titled “Adam and Fallen Man” is divided into five substantial sections. Contrasting pairs of terms and concepts, such as sleep and waking, obedience and disobedience, light and darkness, falling and rising, freedom and bondage, are woven into its strong fabric.

These words from Psalms open the Lesson as its Golden Text: “I have called upon thee, for thou wilt hear me, O God: . . . I shall be satisfied, when I awake, with thy likeness” (Ps. 17:6,
15). The New International Version translates the last part, “when I awake, I will be satisfied with seeing your likeness.” The Hebrew word translated as “awake” includes the sense of an abrupt arousal from sleep.

The first section of the Lesson includes excerpts from Genesis, chapters 1 to 3 (citations 1–3). Corresponding passages from Science and Health point out that there are “two distinct documents in the early part of the book of Genesis,” and assert: “The first record assigns all might and government to God, and endows man out of God’s perfection and power. The second record chronicles man as mutable and mortal,—as having broken away from Deity and as revolving in an orbit of his own” (pp. 523  , 522, cits. 1, 2). This section also includes most of the spiritual interpretation of the name Adam, the longest definition found in the Glossary of Science and Health (p. 579, cit. 4).

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