Solid facts about reality

“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).

Fable in this context means falsehood or lies. With no hidden cameras or instant replays available to provide evidence, justice in Bible times relied on honest testimony. This was of such critical importance that a prohibition against lying about others was expressly included in the Ten Commandments (see Exodus 20:16 ). Still, the Psalmist lamented, “False witnesses did rise up; they laid to my charge things I knew not” (Psalms 35:11 , cit. 7)—false witnesses such as Judas, who betrayed “the Son of man with a kiss” (Luke 22:48 , cit. 10), and the chief priests and elders, who “took counsel against Jesus to put him to death" (Matthew 27:1 , cit. 11). They thought lying could silence the Christ, and their efforts appeared to be successful when Jesus was crucified. But reality was revealed in the resurrection, in “the fact that the Christ, or Truth, overcame and still overcomes death ...” (Science and Health, p. 289 , cit. 22).

The fact of the resurrection enables us to “set [our] sights on the realities of heaven” (Colossians 3:1 , Responsive Reading), as did Mary Magdalene and the “other Mary” (probably the wife of Cleophas and/or the mother of James—see Matthew 27:56 and John 19:25 ). These women were true witnesses in both senses of the word—in what they saw and in what they would testify to others (see Matthew 28, cit. 13). The words spoken to them by an angel in verse 6 developed into a lovely tradition among Orthodox Christians around the world. At Easter, one greets another with “Christ is risen,” and the other replies, “Truly, he is risen.”

Jesus’ resurrection and ascension are the essence of Christianity. They validate his teaching and healing work, as well as the power he gave to all before he ascended and “was received up into heaven, and sat on the right hand of God” (Mark 16:19 , cit. 15). These facts are what enable us to witness, and to be witnesses to, reality, the kingdom of heaven. We will find that “in the vast forever, in the Science and truth of being, the only facts are Spirit and its innumerable creations” (Science and Health, p. 479 , cit. 30).