Editorial February 10, 2020 Issue

Do I really want to be sinless?

Tony Lobl

There are so many thought-provoking statements in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer of Christian Science. From inspiring statements about God’s perfect nature, to its equally Bible-based assertions that we are each the spiritual image of that perfect divinity, to ways in which we can prove these ideas true in our lives, the book is full of ideas to pause and ponder.

But I remember when I was a new reader of Science and Health, one passage didn’t make me so much pause and ponder as screech to a halt and question my commitment to a Christian Science way of life. Speaking of man as the spiritual identity all individuals have as God’s image, it said, “The sinless joy,—the perfect harmony and immortality of Life, possessing unlimited divine beauty and goodness without a single bodily pleasure or pain,—constitutes the only veritable, indestructible man, whose being is spiritual” (p. 76).

It wasn’t just that this seemed out of reach, but that I couldn’t get my thought wrapped around even wanting my joy to be sinless. While “unlimited divine beauty and goodness” sounded wonderfully appealing, and making pain a thing of the past was an enticing possibility, I simply wasn’t aspiring to live “without a single bodily pleasure.”

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Bible Lens—February 10–16, 2020