The perfection of our connections

There are many wonderful ways to think of the library of writings that make up the Bible. One way I’ve come to view this sacred compilation is as the place to go to understand how we’re connected to God and one another.

Above all, in the Gospels Christ Jesus emphasizes the Hebrew teaching of loving God wholeheartedly and our neighbor as ourself. It’s instructive that loving God comes first. How much thought do we devote to trying to get relationships right, whether desiring relationships we don’t have or trying to fix those we do? And how much of that thought would be better spent loving God with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength (see Mark 12:30), which is actually key to righting all our other relationships?

Time and again, Jesus proved the indestructible bond of love between God and each of us as God’s creation, man. This led to healing after healing of those in need, confirming the truth for all humanity of what he said of himself, “I and my Father are one” (John 10:30). This oneness with God is our most basic and vital connection, forever unvarying.

Clearly, it can seem otherwise, but Jesus offered a parable that illustrates the illegitimacy of any sense of alienation from God. He tells the story of the prodigal son, estranged from his father. The fissure was self-inflicted and was very real to him. Yet he found himself fully embraced once he turned back in the right direction for comfort and security. The sense of disconnect had only ever been his own perception. It was never the father’s. 

Time and again, Jesus proved the indestructible bond of love between God and each of us as God’s idea.

So it is for us. When we feel disconnected from our Father-Mother, God, this is only what we are perceiving through the corporeal senses. It’s never what Spirit, God, knows. Deity forever sees us as His spiritual offspring, embraced within the governing force of eternal and universal divine Love, in which we are like the planets orbiting the sun, each rightly related to the sun and one another. 

Praying to perceive this as the reality, despite contrary material evidence, can sometimes require a mighty struggle, but it’s worth persevering. The practicality of discerning the unreality of any alienation from God or each other shows through in Jesus’ many healing encounters. For instance, a man isolated by leprosy pleaded for Jesus to help him (see Matthew 8:1–3). Jesus’ understanding that we are whole in God, always within God’s perfect spiritual creation, enabled him to reach out and touch the man, against the prevailing Hebrew law governing such interactions. By doing so, Jesus lovingly and powerfully expressed his rejection of the belief that those with this disease should be separate because considered unclean. While Jesus’ actions connected the man with a sense of normalcy and goodness, it was Jesus’ clear spiritual perception of him that restored the man’s health, enabling him to re-enter society. 

The underlying perfection of our connection to God is described in many ways in the writings of Mary Baker Eddy, who discovered Christian Science. For instance, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures refers to “the indissoluble spiritual link which establishes man forever in the divine likeness, inseparable from his creator” (p. 491).

Grasping that this is true heals. In our indissoluble inseparability from God we’re never disconnected from health, happiness, or wholeness. These are never-ebbing qualities of our God-established, God-sustained identity, whether we realize this truth rapidly or have to persist until we do.

Similarly, our inseparability from God, divine Love, is where we can plant expectations for our everyday interactions. We can pray to behold our connections as they are in Love’s universe, where Love alone rightly connects its offspring. Knowing that this is so is key to turning around any track record we might feel we have of imperfection in our connections, whether in person or online. As we affirm the orbit in which God holds all in perfect oneness with His love, intelligence, and integrity, interactions that don’t express such qualities stand out. Recognizing that God, good, is not the basis for such interactions, and accepting that God alone governs our connections, we will find inspired ways to elevate the relationship or find ourselves wisely separated for a period, where necessary, without ever ceasing to love an individual. We can also trust God’s guidance to bring us together with those with whom it’s mutually beneficial to be together. Yielding to such divine governance has helped readers of this magazine make better relationship choices, overcome estrangement from family and friends, heal discordant work and church relations—even find safety in war zones.

The perfection of our connections is established in Spirit, as the Scriptures assure us. We’re forever at one with God, and through God, with each other. We will better experience this as we increasingly look out from the Christly perspective with which Jesus saw others, recognizing ourselves and everyone else in our perfectly established, right relationship with our Father-Mother God.

Tony Lobl, Associate Editor