A billboard ad showing a car with a flat tire bore the plaintive caption "Nobody's perfect." The writer's first reaction was to smile in amusement. Then she found herself challenging the platitude with some of the truths she had learned in Christian Science about the perfect creator, the one Spirit, and man's incorruptible spiritual identity in His likeness. Soon she had mentally reworded the billboard caption to read, "God's perfect. Man's perfect. Everybody's really perfect!"

The actual perfection of man as the image or reflection of God, whatever the senses may say, is brought out in the first chapter of Genesis and was the basis on which Christ Jesus healed. Mrs. Eddy writes: "Jesus beheld in Science the perfect man, who appeared to him where sinning mortal man appears to mortals. In this perfect man the Saviour saw God's own likeness, and this correct view of man healed the sick." ^{Science and Health, pp. 476, 477;}

Christian Science emphasizes the importance of beginning and staying with the premise of spiritual perfection in order to bring out harmony. But why does this seem so difficult to do? Why can't we always maintain the correct view of man as perfect—the viewpoint of healing? Possibly because we are too busy looking at mortal, material man with all his faults. We are dwelling on corporeal personality instead of divine reality, on mortal seeming instead of immortal being. Like the ancients who declared the earth to be flat, we are drawing our conclusions from the evidence of the delusive senses. We are going by what seems to be but is not actually so.

Making the distinction between the relative and the absolute—the human that seems to be and the spiritual that really is—calls for much alertness and perseverance on our part. It requires a mental separation of evil, or imperfection, from man and a constant claiming of his spiritual perfection. The standpoint of present spiritual perfection is the only standpoint that the student of Christian Science can correctly take. He accepts these words of Mrs. Eddy as true: "Christian Science is absolute; it is neither behind the point of perfection nor advancing towards it; it is at this point and must be practised therefrom. Unless you fully perceive that you are the child of God, hence perfect, you have no Principle to demonstrate and no rule for its demonstration." ^{The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, p. 242;}

Not only must each of us individually claim his own perfection as the child of God but include all mankind in this appraisal. This is not to say that one is either to condone wrongdoing in others or to neglect correction of his own faults. Imperfection, whether it claims to be attached to ourself or another, must be recognized as unworthy, unwanted, and unreal. It must be seen as no part of God's creation, which is wholly good and perfect. So seen, it can be corrected, step by step. "Perfection is not expressed through imperfection," ^{Science and Health, p. 72;} observes Mrs. Eddy.

Man's real being includes nothing that would support imperfection. It includes no law of heredity, record of failure or disappointment, bad memories, or unhealed scars; no dead yesterday to regret or long for, no unpleasant relationship, unbearable environment, lack, limitation, or need for change; no frustrated today to fret through; no fear of the unknown, impending threat or deadline, anticipated emptiness, postponed good; no uncertain tomorrow to dread or wait for.

"He maketh my way perfect" ^{II Sam. 22:33;} is the Scriptural promise, and "The Lord will perfect that which concerneth me." ^{Ps. 138:8;} Thinking of the things that concern us as perfect rather than imperfect is a step in the right direction. Materially speaking, there may be no such thing as a perfect marriage partner, perfect employer or employees, perfect environment, perfect body, or perfect disposition, but declaring for the fact of spiritual perfection will ultimately improve, adjust, and harmonize our human experience with regard to each of these. Seeing spiritual perfection despite material appearance is seeing a situation as God makes it. Maintaining the spiritual fact that everyone is perfect is according each one the same spiritual status we need to accord ourselves.

A hymn in the Christian Science Hymnal states:

The truth that Christian Science reveals of the divine origin and spiritual perfection of the real man dispels the misconception of man as a difficult, miserable, or unlovable mortal. Then it becomes easier for us to demonstrate this perfection progressively in our daily experience.