The Bible tells us in various places and through different metaphors that everything God created is good, perfect, eternally upright. Man, as God's image, must express this perfect state of being.

Yet, when we look around at the world through the human senses, we see so many things wrong, a "fallen" world. What happened? Did the good things that God originally created go bad? Did some other power come in and take the goodness away from the spiritual things God created? If either of these hypotheses is true, then God really isn't omnipotent. Yet the Master, Christ Jesus, proved for all time God's omnipotence.

Jesus also warned us, however, of the deceptive nature of the material senses. He called the devil "a liar, and the father of it" (John 8:44). The Christian Science textbook, Science and Health by Mary Baker Eddy, helps us see that this "liar" is material sense. This book includes the following explanation of devil: "Evil; a lie; ... the lust of the flesh, which saith: 'I am life and intelligence in matter. There is more than one mind, for I am mind,—a wicked mind, self-made or created by a tribal god and put into the opposite of mind, termed matter, thence to reproduce a mortal universe, including man, not after the image and likeness of Spirit, but after its own image'" (p. 584).

The mortal universe and mortal man are revealed to be lies! A world or a man that could be bad at times, as well as good, just couldn't be created by an all-loving God. God, the only creator, is capable of creating only good. That means that we don't have to accept any worldly image of man as fallen, sick, or helpless. Anytime we begin believing this material perspective, we need to pray humbly to see the truth—through our God-given spiritual sense—and strive to demonstrate this truth.

Mrs. Eddy, a woman of remarkable spiritual insight, realized that the universe God created, described in the opening chapter of Genesis and proved to be spiritual by Christ Jesus, has never somehow left us. She discerned that all the creations of God are present and eternal, despite being invisible to material sense; while the things of matter are not substantial, having no foundation in divine Truth. She also saw that it is impossible for man, who is truly the spiritual idea of God, to fall away from God's goodness. In fact, her discovery about real, spiritual existence came about after a very serious fall on an icy street.

The material view was that the fall would bring on her death. Yet she reached out to God—and the help that is always to be found in the Bible—and was awakened to a glimpse of Life as God, Spirit. She saw this is the only real Life and that this Life was always hers. In Science and Health she later wrote, "Never born and never dying, it were impossible for man, under the government of God in eternal Science, to fall from his high estate" (p. 258).

Every time we witness either ourselves or our fellow children of God as being fallen in any way, we need to realize that this is not the way God's creation was formed, or actually exists. We are not seeing man in his true, God-given estate. We are viewing him through the material senses. Whenever this happens, we need to see God's creation the right way—spiritually upright and always good. For this is the way God created man and the universe, and the only way He knows His creation.

God did not create sickness, but health. He did not create discord and strife, but peace and harmony. He did not create or leave a place for evil; He created good, only good. This is what the Word of God tells us in the Bible, what Christ Jesus proved through his earthly mission, and what Christian Science explains for each one of us to prove also.

Every day we have opportunities to witness God's spiritual creation and to denounce the fallen, material world that the human senses would deceive us into accepting. There are so many times we're tempted to look down and see man as fallen—either physically, emotionally, morally, or economically. But in every instance, the man that God created is actually perfect and present in his high, spiritual estate. Every day, we need to uplift our thinking and witness and acknowledge the real man and the real universe, including ourselves.

About two years ago, I had a wonderful opportunity to lift up my thinking from the belief that an accident could make me fall away from my high estate. The incident actually awakened me to see and acknowledge myself as God's spiritual reflection. I was involved in a collision while on a bicycle. I wasn't able to persuade those at the scene of the mishap that I didn't need to be taken to a hospital. Once there, X-rays were taken, which revealed a fractured pelvis. Nevertheless, I was able to persuade those in the emergency room that I would receive the care I needed at home.

In the quiet, peaceful sanctuary of my home, with the prayerful help of my wife and a Christian Science practitioner, I prayed, and studied many different passages from the Bible and Mrs. Eddy's writings. On the second day of my study, it dawned on me so clearly that we are either totally spiritual, as perfect reflections of God, or fully material and subject to all the evil and ugliness associated with matter. I realized that if God's reflection, man, is spiritual, then what I was reading and studying was real laws, divine truths. If, on the other hand, man is in any part material, then I was only reading soothing words.

At that point, as I was reading and studying, I began to stop at each sentence in Mrs. Eddy's writings and ask myself, "Do you really, really understand and believe that?" I wouldn't read another sentence until I could honestly say "I do understand and believe it." I studied and prayed the rest of the day this way. That evening, I stood up without one bit of pain! Two weeks after the collision I was joyously riding a bicycle again, completely healed of any lingering effect of an accident. I had changed my perspective from that of a human, material view, to the real, spiritual view. What a wonderful vista!

All of us "live, and move, and have our being" in God, divine Life (see Acts 17:28). This is our heritage, right here and right now, no matter what the material senses are currently reporting. Remember, Christ Jesus proved man's high estate to be tangible in human experience again and again, and said that each one of us could prove it too. Just think, whenever we or others seem to be fallen, we can lift up our thinking and experience the real, spiritual universe where we've always truly been. It's the true state of being we can never fall away from.