Seeing through the haze

There is an infamous section of highway between Northern and Southern California called “the Grapevine.” Motorists who drive it regularly know how alert they must be when the “tule fog” descends and they are barely able to see the front of their vehicle. Just as highway signs signal caution to drivers, this week’s Christian Science Bible Lesson is a call for alertness to the fog that can swirl around our concept of identity.

This Bible Lesson topic “Soul and Body” sheds important light on the subject of identity by challenging long-held assumptions that soul is in body. Understanding that Soul is God, and is reflected but not possessed by each of us, or trapped in a material body, lifts a fog of serpentine claims that would obfuscate the truth in areas like morality, health, and life in general. 

Christ, or Truth, is the “fog-buster.” By revealing, through spiritual illumination, man’s unchanging perfection as the expression of Soul, Christ destroys erroneous hereditary labels claiming we are little more than another unique thumbprint or retina scan (see Mary Baker Eddy, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 485 , citation 3).

Why is it important to understand the relationship between Soul and body? Because it’s the key to understanding man’s relationship with God and the way out of every dead end that a matter-based identity implies. “Ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit,” the Apostle Paul explains (Romans 8:9 , Responsive Reading). If our identity is not in the flesh, then it isn’t subject to the whims and patterns of the flesh. This is the great gift of Christian Science—it is the light that illumines the way out of this total obfuscation of material mindedness. “It lifts the veil of mystery from Soul and body. It shows the scientific relation of man to God, disentangles the interlaced ambiguities of being, and sets free the imprisoned thought” (Science and Health, p. 114 , cit. 8).

There is great practicality in understanding the relationship between Soul and body, which is at the crossroads of moral decisionmaking, illustrated by Joseph when his master Potiphar’s wife tried to seduce him (see Genesis 39 , cit. 9). When the higher-status woman makes advances toward Joseph, her husband’s overseer, the young man doesn’t allow anything, including his lower status as a slave, to overturn his native integrity and purity. Joseph illustrates his spiritual identity in which Soul holds the control over body, and that “body is not first and Soul last, nor is evil mightier than good” (Science and Health, p. 207 , cit. 11).

An example from the New Testament also illustrates Soul’s control over the body, when Christ Jesus heals a palsied man, who “arose, and departed to his house” (Matthew 9:7 , cit. 11). Centuries later, Mary Baker Eddy read this same account from the Bible when facing a life-threatening injury. She too climbed from her bed healed, proving that Jesus didn’t provide one-off miracles, which could not be repeated, but demonstrated a provable science she would later name “Christian Science.” The rest of her life illustrated the Psalmist’s conviction of how a single individual can “declare the works of the Lord” (Psalms 118:17 , cit. 16).

We have a choice: Do we, like the doubting Thomas (see John 20 , cit. 19), look mainly to matter for our understanding of substance? Or do we see through that haze to the reality of man’s uncrushable identity in Spirit, as Jesus proved through his resurrection. Soul in body, or Soul and body? This Lesson makes our choice crystal clear!