Conventional thought, especially within academia, can pigeonhole people. It says some people are bright, some not so much. Some people are talented, some not really. Some people are intellectual or artistic superstars, but some are slow learners or learning-disabled. When I was a public school teacher, I found that we were encouraged to give instruction taking into account these individual differences, but not so much encouraged to see each and every student as having unlimited potential.

The spiritual reality, however, is that everyone does have unlimited ability, which God expresses in us all. In the Bible, in the first chapter of Genesis, we learn that God made us in His image and likeness. As His spiritual image and likeness, we reflect our creator. Each of us has the ability to express in uniquely beautiful and individual ways all the good God is. 

We learn from the Bible, which includes Christ Jesus’ powerful example, about God as infinite Love, the Love that gives us everything we need. Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, further explained God’s nature and demonstrated the laws of God that Jesus practiced in healing the sick. She taught, as stated in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, that God is not only all-powerful Love, but is also infinite Principle, Mind, Soul, Spirit, Life, and Truth (see p. 587). If this is the nature of God, then we, as God’s image and likeness, reflect this unlimited nature, including God’s infinite spiritual qualities.

This spiritual understanding of our true nature does not fit with the material picture we see each day. But because God is infinite, eternal Spirit, His idea, man (each one of us), is actually and wholly spiritual and immortal; this is our real identity. This means we are not subject to good or bad human genes, good or bad physical bodies, good or bad homes and neighborhoods, and so on. All these are based on a material sense of identity. We are the beloved spiritual children of God—complete and perfectly nurtured forever by our Father-Mother God. In the Bible we read the profound truth “Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is” (I John 3:2). 

We are the beloved spiritual children of God.

In our true being we are all Godlike. Because God is good, we are good. It is impossible, then, for anything except spiritual goodness to have actual reality in our experience. Infinite good, which is God, fills all space; therefore, evil has no reality and no place to exist. 

The Bible exhorts us to exchange the old man for the new (see Ephesians 4:17–24). Learning to put off the old man (a material, unreal, and limited concept of ourselves) and put on the new man (our unlimited, God-given spiritual identity) comes with step-by-step progress. But it can begin, and the new man be proved in practical ways, here and now.

As a special education teacher, I had a perfect opportunity to know the spiritual identity of students and to witness their God-derived success. The school system had labeled these students as slow, disabled, disturbed, and so on. But instead of studying their perceived disabilities, I always tried to remember that they were not really limited mortals but gifted children of God—intelligent, loving, and expressing every facet of God’s spiritual nature. Although our school’s curriculum provided instruction that was adapted to meet them academically at their current level, in my thought the ladder of achievement for them had no top rung, so they were free to climb as high as they chose.

How did this approach pan out? Here is a favorite example. Four high school boys were placed in my small special-needs class. Every year of high school, I taught them at least two hours a day in reading, English, and various social studies courses. One of the boys began high school with a first-grade reading level, another third-grade, and the other two at about a fourth-grade level. Despite this initial skill deficit, each one graduated from high school on time, and three of the four went on to become successful professionally. These boys were diligent, loving, and routinely hilarious. I am so privileged to have spent four years with them and to have watched them knock down the world’s limits and low expectations.

How did their reading levels improve enough to reach these academic and vocational goals? While I did apply various reading strategies and tried to immerse them in stories, words, and ideas, I am sure none of that would have moved the needle very far without their feeling each day something of the love of God and of the spiritual understanding of their unlimited abilities as God’s creation. I don’t remember ever talking with them about God or their spiritual identity as His children. That was not my role as a public school teacher. But I always knew the spiritual truth about them in my own heart, and that God was the foundation of everything we did in class. I think they felt something of that spiritual truth. 

It was a joy for me to come to school each day and find God’s gifted children everywhere.

Another example: one special-needs student struggled to read aloud because he found sounding out words challenging. But he was dynamic and fearless. His senior year, he braved the possible social humiliation that might come from public reading and auditioned for the school musical. The director asked me if I thought he could handle the leading role, given his obvious challenge with reading aloud. I gave the director a “thumbs-up,” knowing the student could memorize anything and would give the play his all. His role required acting, singing, and dancing, all of which he carried off in glorious form without having had the benefit of previous experience. No one would have expected someone with oral reading challenges to audition for the school musical, much less play the leading role! But I think he knew himself not as disabled, but as smart and strong. Today he owns a successful business.

These five students, of course, were helped along the way by other teachers, friends, and family members. But it was my privilege to prayerfully witness their receptivity to God’s love in their lives and to their natural reflection of infinite good. It was a joy for me to come to school each day and find God’s gifted children everywhere. 

There is a beautiful hymn in the Christian Science Hymnal that begins:

We are released from such “bonds” through the power of the Christ, the truth of man as God’s spiritual idea, which comes to save us when we humbly look to God and know that divine Mind, God, gives us the ability and wisdom we need. In this knowing, we can vehemently insist on and hold our thought to the fact that we, and all others, are not flawed material beings, but God’s spiritual image and likeness. We then joyfully wake up more and more each day to see and to be our true selves—spiritual, perfect, boundless.