If you’ve ever struggled with a bad character trait, you know that it can be a beast. Shakespeare called jealousy, for example, a green-eyed monster, and I was its unhappy prisoner until Christian Science released me. 

It can take work to stop believing that a character flaw is baked into who we are. Greed, envy, hatred, and pride are so prevalent in people and nations that we call them human nature. But is evil really our nature? What about the generosity of neighbor helping neighbor, the sacrifices people make for a cause, the decisions that guide individuals or nations to do the right thing? Actions such as these point to an underlying motivating goodness. As explained in Christian Science, this powerful good is God, the Soul of all that really exists. 

We may be ready to admit that God is good, but what about us? We’re not God. No, but God’s goodness must be expressed. That expression is man. Man is the overarching term in Christian Science for the true, spiritual identity of every man, woman, and child. We might be accustomed to thinking that man is a mortal who is both good and bad, but understood rightly, spiritual man is actually the full expression of God, Spirit. This is true no matter how often a mortal sense of ourselves and others tries to make us lose sight of it.