"Like father, like son"

EDWARD IRVING PETERS

How often in an attempt to explain some characteristic we hear the expression, "He gets that from his father," or, "That is inherited from his mother"! This also may apply to disease, which mortal mind attributes either wholly or in part to heredity. Numerous human interests, abilities, and traits are justified as the consequence of similar tastes and qualities found in a parent or even a remote ancestor.

"Like father, like son" is one of the many limiting laws mankind imposes upon itself. Such a law often deprives one of his individuality, keeping him from developing energies and human capacities on his own initiative. It prevents him from overcoming his faults because he believes that, since he has inherited them from his parents, they cannot be corrected. This false law even goes so far as to sentence the unborn child to a life of physical discomfort because of an ailment of one or the other human parent.

This depressing claim of mortal mind is soundly challenged, however, by Christian Science. In "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," Mary Baker Eddy makes the following comments regarding the belief of heredity (p. 228): "The transmission of disease or of certain idiosyncrasies of mortal mind would be impossible if this great fact of being were learned,—namely, that nothing inharmonious can enter being, for Life is God. Heredity is a prolific subject for mortal belief to pin theories upon; but if we learn that nothing is real but the right, we shall have no dangerous inheritances, and fleshly ills will disappear."

Let us reject and correct the popular aphorism, "Like father, like son," through the understanding of Christian Science. Man, the son of God, bears witness only to God, Spirit, expressing all of His attributes in multitudinous ways. Thus we see that inheritance is not a material condition, good or bad, but a rich legacy of spiritual perfection bestowed upon man by his ever-loving Father-Mother, God. Paul expresses this thought where he writes (Rom. 8:16, 17), "The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God: and if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ."

A dictionary gives the meaning of heredity as "hereditary transmission of the physical and psychical characters of parents to their offspring." Hence we see that heredity, which is either physical or psychical, does not belong to the realm of the real, wherein all is spiritual and Godlike. In demonstrating dominion over the so-called law of heredity, we must rule out of consciousness the belief that man inherits either a desirable human trait or an undesirable one. Neither a favorable nor a harmful heredity is the truth of being; both are unreal. Man's heritage is from the one Father, who is the source of all good. Then the spiritual qualities which a human mother or father expresses must come from the one source—God. As we grasp this truth, we see also that since the heavenly Father bestows His love and goodness impartially on all His children, our neighbor in reality also enjoys the spiritual heritage of good.

To acknowledge that error can be experienced by some individual and yet contend that it cannot be manifested in our own experience, is not scientific. We must correct the error, deny it reality in our consciousness regardless of how or to whom it claims to present itself. Failing to do this, we may be susceptible to the same belief, because we have accepted it as real in our own thinking. How important it is to guard carefully the portal of our consciousness, permitting only good to enter! By so doing we determine just how much of our God-given heritage we shall enjoy from day to day and free ourselves from material heredity.

"Heredity is not a law," our Leader assures us (Science and Health, p. 178). And farther on she continues, "In proportion to our understanding of Christian Science, we are freed from the belief of heredity, of mind in matter or animal magnetism; and we disarm sin of its imaginary power in proportion to our spiritual understanding of the status of immortal being." Than let us realize and demonstrate the spiritual verity that, since God is the one Father. His son is Godlike.

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"Perfection is normal"

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