Matter’s masks stripped away
For the Lesson titled “Matter” from March 17–23, 2014
This Bible Lesson, titled “Matter,” shows how Christian Science reveals not only what is not substantial (matter), but also reveals what is: Spirit. Like a physicist committed to finding the building blocks of the universe, the student of Christian Science can explore this Lesson to understand the spiritual building blocks that make up reality. In the process one sees the healing practicality of this spiritual understanding.
Many thinkers, weary of material theories, yearn to understand the power and cause behind creation. Job symbolizes this spiritual quest, and in seeking answers from God, he is asked, perhaps as a parent would give a gentle reminder to an inquiring child: “Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth?” (Job 38:4 , citation 2).
What is that “foundation”—which God would lay? The Deuteronomist not only knew the answer, but also the disastrous consequences of forgetting it, when he declared: “Of the Rock that begat thee thou art unmindful, and hast forgotten God that formed thee” (Deuteronomy 32:18 , cit. 6). Or, as The New Living Translation (NLT) renders it: “You neglected the Rock who had fathered you; you forgot the God who had given you birth.”
This neglect of God as creator is illustrated on a collective basis in the story of the tower of Babel. The book of Genesis describes how an entire community forgot “the rock” that had fathered them and decided to display their supposed mastery by building a tower “whose top may reach unto heaven” (Genesis 11:4 , cit. 10).
When the place where the tower is built is identified as Babel, the author makes a play on words connecting it with the Hebrew verb balal, meaning “to confuse” or “to mix up.” Balal was usually used as a cooking term when various food products were mixed, but this is one of only two places in the Hebrew Scriptures where the term is used to indicate another kind of mixing—such as the mixing up or confusion over what type of rock on which to build. Thus the tower of Babel is about the chaos and confusion that follow efforts constructed on human pride and ego.
Jesus shared a parable about such building efforts when he told of the wise man who built his house on the rock, while a foolish man fashioned his on sand. Storms came, but only the house built on the rock held fast (see Matthew 7, cit. 13).
Mary Baker Eddy captured the spiritual significance of rock in her glossary of 125 biblical terms: “Spiritual foundation; Truth” (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 593 , cit. 1). This definition provides insight into the way rock is used throughout this Lesson, such as by the Psalmist: God is “the rock of my strength” (Psalm 62:6 , Golden Text).
Eddy’s spiritual understanding of the universe came from her lifelong search of the Scriptures. More than perceiving matter as a scientific non-phenomena, she understood its seductive, idolatrous nature. This important Scriptural link alerts the reader to how matter’s contemporary masks must be stripped away so as to obey the Second Commandment: “You must not make for yourself an idol of any kind or an image of anything in the heavens or on the earth or in the sea” (Exodus 20:4, NLT). What a vital study.
About the author
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