In the Christian Science Bible Lesson March 25, 2013 Issue

Solid facts about reality

For the Lesson titled "Reality" from March 25 - 31, 2013

Kathleen Collins

“Just the facts, ma’am,” said detective Joe Friday, as he interviewed witnesses on the old TV show Dragnet. And that’s what we get in this week’s Christian Science Bible Lesson, titled “Reality”—just the facts about the Christ and the kingdom of God.

Reality and facts are synonymous, as two translations of the Golden Text (Colossians 2:17) illustrate: the Contemporary English Version (used this week), “Christ is real!” and J. B. Phillips’s “the solid fact is Christ.” As Mary Baker Eddy writes in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, “The spiritual reality is the scientific fact in all things” (p. 207, citation 5).

To discern this spiritual reality, or scientific fact, we need a fan! Not a device for cooling the air, but a winnowing fork, a shovel-like tool used to separate the chaff (fluffy useless stuff) from the wheat (substantial edible grain), a process that John the Baptist described vividly when he prophesied the coming Christ “whose fan is in his hand” (Matthew 3:12, cit. 3). The spiritual significance of this fan is found in the Glossary of Science and Health: “Separator of fable from fact;” (p. 586, cit. 2).