CHILDREN OF GOD

FRANCES PORTER

God's children are spiritual ideas, never immature, incomplete, or subject to phases of imperfection. Mary Baker Eddy states in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 244), "Man in Science is neither young nor old." Man is, and always has been, mature, complete, perfect, pure.

The changeless perfection of the man of God's creating is expressed in these words from the Bible (Eccl. 3:14): "I know that, whatsoever God doeth, it shall be for ever: nothing can be put to it, nor any thing taken from it." The mortal belief that man must come into being as an infant and must then pass through states and stages of material development before reaching maturity is the basic error from which springs the belief in child-hood diseases and erroneous dispositional traits. God's children do not achieve maturity; they have maturity.

Mrs. Eddy defines "children" in part as, "The spiritual thoughts and representatives of Life, Truth, and Love" (Science and Health, p. 582). A spiritual thought can never be less than perfect. A representative of Deity can never represent anything contrary to His purity, wholeness, and completeness. The children of God reflect His spiritual power, health, wisdom, understanding, love, and holiness. "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased" (Matt. 3:17) is the benediction bestowed for all eternity on every child of the Father-Mother God.

In dispelling error of any kind, the spiritual counterfact must be brought to light. And the spiritual counterfact regarding all the erroneous beliefs attaching themselves to childhood is man's present and eternal maturity, purity, and perfection. This truth, understood, is a law of annihilation to all the ills which mortal belief attaches to childhood.

The parents of a child who had contracted measles prayed faithfully for the child for several days, attempting to handle each symptom as it appeared, but the healing did not come. Then a Christian Science practitioner was called, and the child showed immediate improvement and was quickly healed. In talking with the practitioner the mother learned that the practitioner had denied the belief that man can be subject to mortal laws of contagion and can express immaturity, that he can be less than complete and perfect.

Mortal belief says that children often pass through various states and stages of evil in their journey from childhood to maturity and that such experiences, being inseparable from growth, cannot be avoided. Thus insubordination, defiance, selfishness, aggressiveness, and similar errors are attached to childhood and adolescence by general mortal belief.

The latter part of Mrs. Eddy's definition of "children" on page 583 of Science and Health reads, "Sensual and mortal beliefs; counterfeits of creation, whose better originals are God's thoughts, not in embryo, but in maturity; material suppositions of life, substance, and intelligence, opposed to the Science of being."

Undesirable traits of character can be eliminated from experience as effectively as can disease through utilization of the truths pertaining to man's maturity and purity. Man is now and has always been spiritual and holy, untainted by a single sin, desiring and possessing nothing which does not emanate from God, the only creator. No law of mortal belief can attach evil or unpleasantness of any nature to man, the immaculate reflection or idea of Principle, completely formed after the pattern of his Maker, needing no additions and requiring no corrections.

Mrs. Eddy states this truth where she writes (ibid., p. 476), "When speaking of God's children, not the children of men, Jesus said, 'The kingdom of God is within you;' that is, Truth and Love reign in the real man, showing that man in God's image is unfallen and eternal." Understanding that true selfhood is the changeless reflection of Love's goodness, constituted of pure and holy thoughts, makes it possible for us to reject the suggestion that evil is a part of our being which must be endured until it is outgrown. There is no "problem child" in the kingdom of heaven.

When childhood sickness and misbehavior are seen as illusory symbols of the mortal belief of immaturity, they will disappear and man's true being as the child of God will appear. Replacement of false mortal beliefs with spiritual truths regarding the children of God benefits not only ourselves and our children but all mankind and hastens the day when, in the words of Paul (Eph. 4:13), "we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ."

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