Editorial February 8, 2016 Issue

Completeness and progress

Barbara Vining

Progress is usually thought of as having to do with time—moving toward something. And completeness is usually thought of as the end result of progress—a time when things are finally complete. But the discovery of Christian Science by Mary Baker Eddy revealed completeness as the starting point of all that is real, and progress as the unfolding of completeness in all its multifarious details.

This, of course, is the spiritual reality—and I have found it to be exceptionally practical. To the degree that one understands it, and consents to it as reality in any given situation, it becomes manifest in very tangible ways in one’s human experience. So, let’s take a look at what there is to be understood about completeness and progress from the spiritual standpoint taken in Christian Science. It has to do with the spiritual record of creation in the first book of the Holy Bible.

The very first verse in the Bible says, “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth” (Genesis 1:1). It doesn’t say anything about how God began, because God never had a starting point; He just is, and always has been. And it doesn’t say anything about God finding something outside of Himself to create the heaven and earth, because everything is, and always has been complete, within His own being as infinite Spirit; it only needed to be revealed to humanity.

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