Article December 18, 2017 Issue

God—‘something’ or all-presence?

Lyle Young

A conventional way of thinking of God is something like this: There is human existence, with all the aspects with which everyone is familiar. We know that there are people and cities, salaries and gross national products, lichens and poplars, planets and stars. And yes, there may or may not be God. But that God would be one more “thing,” a divine Being somewhere.

But have you ever considered that God might actually be the only true presence—in fact, all that is and could be present—omnipresent Love and intelligence? What if God was so infinite that there could be nothing in addition to God, but everything that existed did so as the expression of God, at one with Him, Her? What would change for us if we understood life not as part of a physical, cosmic development, organic and mortal, but as the spiritual reflection of the one living, dynamic, divine Life that is ever fresh and eternal?

This idea of God not as “something” but as All was what was revealed to Mary Baker Eddy and what she communicates in her books. This revelation of God brings a new perspective to obeying the First Commandment—to having no other gods before God—and the Second Commandment—to not making for oneself any graven image (see Exodus 20:3, 4). To have no other God is to recognize the sheer totality of God as the one indivisible, immutable whole—unlimited Spirit—that expresses itself in a creation that must be, like itself, spiritual.

Send a comment to the editors

NEXT IN THIS ISSUE

Article

Immunity from conspiracy