Article August 12, 2019 Issue

Spiritual identity and healing

Gaston Mantinou

When we speak of someone’s identity, we are often referring to a human sense of the person—their surname and given name, date and place of birth, nationality, residence, and so forth—facts one might find on an ID card. But to know their real identity, we must go beyond the material data about them and look instead at their true, spiritual origin.

The Bible tells us that God created man in His image and likeness and gave him dominion over all the earth. It also says that God saw His creation as “very good” (Genesis 1:31).

What else do we know about this spiritual man of God’s creating? In the Christian Science textbook, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, Mary Baker Eddy answers the question “What is man?” this way: “Man is idea, the image, of Love; he is not physique. He is the compound idea of God, including all right ideas; the generic term for all that reflects God’s image and likeness;…” (p. 475).

Send a comment to the editors

NEXT IN THIS ISSUE

From Teens

Lifting the burden