Guest Editorial September 5, 2016 Issue

The world has need of us, as children

James Pascal Bikai

I remember that when I was a teenager, my brothers and sisters and I always quarreled because of little misunderstandings, and sometimes we fought. I worried a lot about this situation. Although my mother and father taught us respect and understanding, the quarreling didn’t stop.

My first Christian Science Sunday School lesson made me seriously think about this unease among my brothers and sisters. I was profoundly impressed by the Ten Commandments, which I heard for the first time that day, particularly the First Commandment: “Thou shalt have no other gods before me” (Exodus 20:3). Back at home, I shared with my brothers and sisters what I had learned—that quarreling and fighting was having a god besides the one God. None of us wanted to have another god. Things started to change, and we never quarreled or fought again. The lesson I learned that day in Sunday School is still with me.

What I learned of the First Commandment stirred within me an understanding of God as Mind, the only Mind, and of what it means to have this one Mind. Mary Baker Eddy, the discoverer of Christian Science, wrote this about the commandment: “The First Commandment is my favorite text. It demonstrates Christian Science. It inculcates the triunity of God, Spirit, Mind; it signifies that man shall have no other spirit or mind but God, eternal good, and that all men shall have one Mind” (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 340).

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