When a student of Christian Science was unable to heal a man of a serious wound he had received during the American Civil War, a radical spiritual insight was shared with him. He was advised by Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer of Christian Science, that both he and his patient needed to be released from the belief that a war had occurred and was part of the patient’s history.

Although this might sound like a denial-of-facts approach to viewing history, it is consistent with the account of creation outlined in the first chapter of Genesis in the Bible, in which our true “history”—our eternal reality—is actually spiritual and good because we’re made in the likeness of God, Spirit, and are therefore spiritual.

An article relating this experience goes on to elaborate on the importance of eliminating from our own thought and self-concept any notion of a material history (Ira W. Packard, “Justification,” Sentinel, May 10, 1913). For some time, I had been rereading this Sentinel article and pondering its lesson in reference to some personal challenges in my life, endeavoring to understand that because God, divine Spirit, created us, we have a history that is spiritual not material. In other words, we each have a history in common with everyone else based on what God knows about us all as His precious children. In reality, we have no other history—no material back story or record of occurrences that can dictate our health, progress, or potential. It had been helpful to explore this on an individual level, but I hadn’t yet expanded my application of this spiritual truth on a broader scale. That is, until the fall of 2019.