Editorial August 21, 2017 Issue

Are we selfishizing or are we ‘walking in the light of God’?

Allison W. Phinney

Who wants to be involved in something that’s called selfishizing? It sounds self-focused and negative. And who wouldn’t want to be “walking in the light of God,” with all its uplift, healing, and promise of new possibilities, rather than being stuck in thinking from the standpoint of a limited human selfhood? Contrary to the opinion of human ego and will, real individuality isn’t lost but found through drawing closer to God.

Not surprisingly, it was Mary Baker Eddy who coined that word selfishizing. She was well aware of the need to find language that would help others grasp the extent and depth of what she had seen in her spiritual experience. Occasionally she developed a phrase such as mortal mind or greatly expanded the meaning of a word such as error.

One day, for example, when she’d called some of the workers in her household together to further their understanding of Christian Science, she coined the word selfishize. Here’s what she said: “There are no personalities, for God is impersonal and to personalize ourselves, to say I, etc., is to selfishize ourselves. To personalize others is to selfishize others. This is not Christian Science” (We Knew Mary Baker Eddy, Vol. II, Expanded Edition, p. 139).