The human mind has a habit of viewing most everything through the lens of limitation. And this makes it hard for people to believe that there can be such a thing as an unlimited God—a divine presence that is everywhere at all times for everyone. So, we often adopt a faith in God through a feeling that there must be a God, but without understanding what this means and how it can bring healing to our lives. 

But the Bible, studied in the light of Christian Science, offers a spiritual lens through which God can be understood. This lens is spiritual sense, “a conscious, constant capacity to understand God” (Mary Baker Eddy, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 209), which we all have. Spiritual sense enables us to discern qualities such as love, justice, mercy, goodness, purity, and so on as spiritual, not material. These spiritual qualities define both God’s nature and our inherent nature as God’s creation. 

Through this lens of spiritual sense we start to comprehend the unlimited nature of God as infinite Spirit—that God is not confined within the limits of a material time-space framework, but fills all space at all times. This opens up what Christ Jesus meant when he said we should worship God “in spirit and in truth” (John 4:23), and makes practical what the Apostle Paul meant when he said, “In [God] we live, and move, and have our being” (Acts 17:28). 

Because God is Spirit and Spirit is infinite, God must be unlimited. It follows, then, that we live in Spirit. And our real identity must be spiritual and unlimited, not material and limited. Our nature must be like God’s nature, including all those beautiful, spiritual qualities. So, when spiritual qualities seem absent in human experience, we can thank God that spiritual sense reveals that they are present for us to discern and express. Then we begin to have a tangible sense of God as an actual living presence—and fear begins to lose its hold on us. We no longer have a blind faith. 

Healing occurs when we accept and live in accord with the infinity of God, in which health, purity, and life are present for everyone all the time.

We begin to love God on the basis of what we are learning of Him and of ourselves as His spiritual reflection. We find ourselves naturally turning to God and opening our hearts and minds to His living presence working within us. As we do this, we begin to experience improvements in our thought and body. This can happen even with a young child. 

I remember one time when my husband and I had gone out for the evening and left the children with a sitter. When we came home, I found a note from our daughter, who was now sound asleep, that she had had a stomachache, but when she read from the Bible and prayed, she had felt God’s presence and was healed. 

It can seem hard sometimes to grasp God as infinite Spirit, because it requires us to think differently about matter. But consider the logic of this: Because the divine Spirit is infinite, it is totally unlimited. Matter, on the other hand, is finite, limited in every respect, and limitation cannot exist within infinity. As we feel the reality of these facts, it brings a deep and profound change of perspective. We conclude that matter is a belief in limitation—and that disease, sin, and death are the effects of this belief. And with this change in our consciousness, we also experience improvements in our character and healing in our bodies. It is infinite, divine Spirit itself changing our thinking and healing us.  

The infinity of Spirit is basic to the way Christ Jesus healed people and expected his followers to be successful healers. One time, Jesus, against societal taboo, put a reassuring hand on a leper, and with God-reflected love said he would heal him. The leper was healed right then! Can you imagine how that leper felt? Healing occurs when we accept, and humbly begin to live in accord with, the infinity of God, in which health, purity, and life are present for everyone all the time. This shows how tremendously important to our well-being it can be to gain an understanding of God as infinite Spirit. Infinity is the law of divine Love, the law of infinite being—of our being as God’s spiritual reflection. 

Spiritual sense continually opens up for us a deeper understanding of God and of our true nature. Spiritual sense can be cultivated through an open-hearted study of the Bible and the Christian Science textbook, Science and Health, together with prayer and putting into practice what we are learning. In this way, we begin to discern that whatever is discordant, harmful, unloving, or impure—whatever suggests that God is less than infinite, less than the only creator and governor of man and the universe, less than invariable Love, or less than our eternal Life—is nothing more than a mistaken belief in limitation that cannot stand in the face of God spiritually understood, loved, and honored in our consciousness and life.

As we do this, we will increasingly find this opening sentence in the Preface of Science and Health proved true: “To those leaning on the sustaining infinite, to-day is big with blessings” (p. vii).

Barbara Vining
Editor