There is nothing more to the genuine identity of each of us than what is spiritual, Godlike. Man's identity is entirely the product of the Mind that is God, divine Spirit. As there is no creative power in addition to infinite Spirit, there is nothing to man's identity in addition to spirituality.

"Spirit, God, has created all in and of Himself," states Mrs. Eddy. "Spirit never created matter. There is nothing in Spirit out of which matter could be made, for, as the Bible declares, without the Logos, the Æon or Word of God, 'was not anything made that was made'" (Science and Health, p. 335). The sum total of man, the entirety of his nature, his wholeness, is exclusively spiritual—exactly and solely what God is expressing in him. God's creation and the belief of materiality are not related. So for God's expression, material birth and death are out of the question.

Today, and more than ever before, our world is investing billions of dollars and incredible effort attempting to care for the health of mankind. Most of the present health-care systems are based on the assumption that man is either entirely material or a material shell, possibly inhabited by something indistinctly spiritual; that he is a fragile mortal, on a journey from material conception to the "death process"—and nothing more.

It would be a sad thing, though, if the whole of man were confined to the random chaos of materiality. Most people hope, if not believe, that there is more to existence than what corporeal vision affords. In H. G. Wells's The Undying Fire, a Job-like character sourly ponders, "All this life is like waiting outside, in a place of some disorder, before being admitted to the wider reality, the larger sphere, where all the cruelties, all these confusions, everything—will be explained, justified— and set right" (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1919, p. 122).

This character is waiting out life, waiting to be "admitted to the wider reality," presuming man begins on the outside, excluded somehow from God's creation. Yet man is never external to God's creation. That is because there is no "outside" to God, the All-in-all. The real man, God's reflection, has always existed at one with God, and he always will. Before the "beginning" of the material universe, man— not corporeal and material, but wholly spiritual—had been established eternally intact. Man doesn't wait for admission into God's presence, since he has never been excluded from it.

It was Christ Jesus' understanding of Life as God, Spirit, and of man's perfect spiritual being that enabled him to prove the unreality and impotence of disease and frailty, of jealousy, envy, revenge, and, finally, attempted murder. "It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life," he once said (John 6:63).

We can contribute to the regeneration of mankind through this same understanding. Following Jesus, we must begin with the truth, with reality—God's perfect, loved, wondrous spiritual creation. There is no need to rivet our whole attention on why cruelty, disease, injustice, or a death process seems to occur. The question isn't how they could occur, but ultimately, why divine Spirit doesn't permit them to exist in the first place. Science and Health states: "For right reasoning there should be but one fact before the thought, namely, spiritual existence. In reality there is no other existence, since Life cannot be united to its unlikeness, mortality" (p. 492).

Suppose your best friend was asleep, dreaming he or she was in a terribly dangerous situation. If somehow you knew of the dream as it was happening, would you feel fear for your friend? No, you'd be aware that the danger, in fact the entirety of the difficulty, was merely the substance of a dream. Similarly, any life you and I think we may have that is apart from God is also dreamlike—its "substance" is the mortal, or Adam-, dream —the dream of life originating in matter rather than Spirit. Yet, we have never been material, on the outside of good's universe trying to get in. As the creation of Spirit we are forever at one with goodness. No matter what we see firsthand or what is reported to us by others, the man of divine Spirit's creating is forever safe, and this is who we really are. No mortal dream can alter God's expression, His spiritual creation, any more than it can alter God.

In the only universe there is—God's spiritually perfect manifestation—good only is actual. Don't let the lies, suggestions, or tears of mortality obscure your perception of God's marvelous reality.

Mark Swinney is Managing Editor of the Christian Science Sentinel and The Christian Science Journal.