Choosing life

The Bible opens with a recital of the facts respecting the creation of all things, in which man is created by God after His own likeness and to be good and fruitful. This is followed by an account of the creation of a different and contrary kind of man—a man created from dust and liable to evil and death. These two accounts, known to Bible students as the Elohistic and the Jehovistic accounts of creation, from their different names for the creator, are essentially inconsistent. The man described in the one does not image the same creator as the man described in the other. The second man lacks the essential qualities of the first. Their attributes differ as good differs from evil and life from death.

When any theist—any believer in the existence of one creator and ruler of the universe—examines and compares these accounts of creation, his conclusions respecting them will depend on his definition of God. Christian Scientists are theists and they join the Psalmist in declaring “Thou art good and doest good.” They accept the Scriptural assurances that God is Love, Spirit, Mind, Truth, Life; and they acknowledge the axiom which Christ Jesus laid down when he said, “Either make the tree good, and his fruit good; or else make the tree corrupt, and his fruit corrupt.”

Christian Scientists therefore consistently deny the creation of a kind of man which does not reflect God as thus defined, for the reasons that Spirit and matter, Life and death, good and evil are antithetical and hence they cannot be related as cause and effect, creator and creation, Principle and idea, God and Godlikeness. Christian Scientists accordingly eliminate evil and death from their concept of man exactly as they do from their concept of God, and they hold these attributes or characteristics to be as untrue of man as they are untrue of God.

Christian Scientists regard the Elohistic and the Jehovistic accounts of creation as setting forth the spiritual and the material views of creation. One account records the actual creation of man; the other endeavors to account for what is called a sinful mortal. They introduce the question of salvation, and show that it is a question of salvation from evil and its effects, from death and its causes.

This problem and the way of salvation were set before the children of Israel by Moses as the result of a revelation to him in the land of Moab. The incident is recorded in the twenty-ninth and thirtieth chapters of Deuteronomy. On this occasion Moses told his followers that “He (the Lord thy God) is thy Life;” and he said to them, “See, I have set before thee this day life and good, and death and evil; in that I command thee this day to love the Lord thy God, to walk in His ways, and to keep His commandments and His statutes and His judgments.… But if thine heart turn away, so that thou wilt not hear, but shalt be drawn away, and worship other gods and serve them; I denounce unto you this day that ye shall surely perish.… I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live."

The popular belief is, either that evil and death belong to the character and nature of man, or that they must inevitably enter into man’s character and change his nature. The covenant revealed in Moab, the pith of which is here quoted, teaches directly the contrary; and it teaches how each individual may choose life and good in preference to death and evil. It teaches the oneness of Life—the unity in being of God and man. It teaches that evil and death are extraneous to being; and that each individual may exclude them from his self by a certain mental habit or practice.

One reason why humanity’s God-given power to choose life instead of death has not been exercised to a greater degree is that humanity has not clearly distinguished between good and evil. Faith in sense-perception has obscured the true sense of good. Moses taught that good is one with Life, God, and death is one with evil. Christ Jesus increased our knowledge of God by defining Him as Spirit. Christian Science draws the logical conclusion that nothing unlike Spirit can be good but must be evil, and therefore teaches that the distinction between good and evil is the same as between Spirit and matter, and hence that death is a phase of the belief that life exists in matter.

The correctness of this conclusion is confirmed by two of the Master’s most emphatic utterances. “It is the Spirit that giveth life; the flesh profiteth nothing.” “Except one be born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.” If “it is the Spirit that giveth life” and if “that which is born of the Spirit is spirit,” the conclusion necessarily follows that life is neither in nor of matter. A belief to the contrary is a belief in death, and whoever entertains such a belief chooses death. Matter is that which is not Spirit nor born of Spirit; and the belief in its reality is error; it is evil.

Returning now to the rules given by Moses for choosing life, it is to be observed that the way of life is to love God, to walk in His ways and to keep his laws. To do this requires a loving, intelligent, and single-minded allegiance to God. Set over against this course is the way of death; which is to worship or serve other gods. Since God is Spirit, to worship or serve another god is to pursue a materialistic course of life, to be guided by material laws, to love or fear any form or phase of matter, to admit its claim of reality. The warning given by Moses in the land of Moab against serving or worshiping other gods is substantially the same as the first commandment of the decalogue. Mrs. Eddy interprets the first commandment to mean, “'Thou shalt have no intelligence, no life, no substance, no truth, no love, but that which is spiritual” (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 467 ). This interpretation will help “thee and thy seed” to choose good and life.