In the Christian Science Bible Lesson November 5, 2012 Issue

Know your true self

For the Lesson titled "Mortals and Immortals" from November 5 - 11, 2012

Christa Kreutz—Chesterfield, Missouri

The ancient delphic maxim, “Know thyself,” voices a recurring theme in religion, philosophy, and science. It is natural to want to understand our nature and purpose. While there are many interpretations of this maxim, some early Christians embraced it as knowing one’s true spiritual self, or the divine spark within. And then there is Samuel Coleridge’s poetic response. He found this maxim too self-interested and declared instead, “Ignore thyself, and strive to know thy God!” (“Self-Knowledge,” 1832). Perhaps both responses have validity, as this week’s Bible Lesson, “Mortals and Immortals,” invites us to know both God and our true selves as the immortal expression of God’s being. 

The Lesson opens the first section with multiple passages from Isaiah describing how God created humankind with knowledge, blessings, and understanding. Isaiah says, “I will pour out my spirit upon thy seed” (44:3, citation 3). God’s very nature is expressed through men, women, and children. Included are God’s promises for blessings and guidance always, not just for a fixed time, showing the eternal nature of God’s love. And Isaiah 45 explains that God is the only source of being, whether we see it or not: “I am the Lord, and there is none else, there is no God beside me: I girded thee, though thou hast not known me” (cit. 4).

Further explaining the spiritual nature of God and God’s creation is Proverbs 8. In an unmediated feminine voice, wisdom here describes herself as part of the origin and structural nature of the world. Wisdom says, “The Lord possessed me in the beginning of his way, before his works of old. I was set up from everlasting, from the beginning, or ever the earth was” (verses 22 and 23, cit. 7). These verses explain that the principles of wisdom, such as harmony, order, and integrity, are preexistent. We might not see them if we are looking at a limited material existence. Similarly, Mary Baker Eddy writes in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, “Being possesses its qualities before they are perceived humanly” (p. 247, cit. 6). The qualities of immortal being are always there. But it is by emerging from a mortal sense of identity that we are able to perceive them.