How would you react to the prospect of meeting an alien? With excitement? Apprehension? Well, take a look at your family, your workplace, your church. See anyone of a different sex? Talk to that individual. Interact. Congratulations, you've just had an alien encounter!

At least so says much of current relationship theory. Most approaches to human relations leave God, our real Parent, out of the picture, and build on the false premise imposed on mankind generally: that we are genetically imprinted sexual, material, mortal personalities. But we aren't. The Bible announces the spiritual facts that "whatsoever God doeth, it shall be for ever" (Eccl. 3:14) and that the mortal and material have to yield to the truth of our immortality and spirituality (see I Cor. 15:48–54). Echoing Scriptural admonitions not to judge after outward appearances, not to lean on a material understanding of things, Mary Baker Eddy pointedly observes, "If the premise of mortal existence is wrong, any conclusion drawn therefrom is not absolutely right" (Miscellaneous Writings, p. 288).

From the array of articles on gender relations in the magazines at supermarket checkouts to the extensive shelf space given to the subject in bookstores, we can see vast amounts of time and money being spent in a societal search for the Grail of a good personal relationship. What if instead we invested similar resources in our individual and collective relationship to good itself?

The Scriptures declare God is good, the source of all goodness. His creation, expressing Him, is good. Spiritually seen, we are God's goodness manifested. Jesus teaches us to "call no man your father upon the earth: for one is your Father, which is in heaven" (Matt. 23:9). He refused to attribute good to—or anchor good in—material personalities. He acknowledged only God as good. And Jesus saw that this admission requires us to challenge any priorities that divorce good from God. He advises us to seek our good in God through understanding His nature and yielding to His control, rather than to chase the externals—like relationships—we are taught to believe comprise good. And he promised that this will both correctly maintain God's primacy in our life and provide for our human needs, including right relations.

Why was Christ Jesus so concerned that we keep a right sense of priorities? Because out of his unequaled love for humanity came unparalleled hopes for us. And a good car? Money? The ideal human relationship as defined by a romance novel or marital seminar? These weren't even blips on the radar screen of his desire for us.

Then what did he want for us? Everlasting life. He wanted us to share his knowledge of our Father, whom he knew to be Spirit, divine Life, Truth, and Love. To overcome, as he did, the worldly illusions of sin, disease, and death. To realize—to bring into concrete being—our actual spiritual identity as the sons and daughters of God. To experience the freedom and dominion that come by awakening to and living our real relation to God.

Jesus taught that misplacing our priorities—placing our hopes in another sex or person, another limited mind and body—could never satisfy our deepest needs. When we believe it can, we are misplacing good, worshiping another god—breaking the First Commandment.

Modern relationship theory and science—reasoning from appearances—assume we are each born capriciously, inextricably, on one side or the other of a great gender divide. But Christian Science holds only that which is in accord with God to be really scientific. The Scriptures declare that God made man in His own likeness, and made them male and female; that we have our real being within, not outside, our heavenly Parent. So if His likeness is both male and female, doesn't God include within Himself the "different" spiritual ideas and qualities we associate with man and woman? And can these qualities possibly be alien to each other? Of course not. Or God would be at war with Himself.

The Bible represents God as Love as well as Truth, and it speaks of Him as both mothering and fathering. We each have a right to lay claim to the completeness of our spiritual identity as the full reflection of God—as His "male and female." Divine Love is certainly not withholding from men tenderness, compassion, intuition. And Truth is not withholding from women strength, integrity, courage.

A female friend of mine, after some unfulfilling relationships with men in which she was tempted to believe that men were alien creatures, turned to prayer for help in finding right companionship. Her prayer revealed more of God's indivisible nature as our divine Father-Mother, and showed her that God denied none of His spiritual qualities to any of His offspring. As the sun to its rays, our Father-Mother pours out His full nature to each of us, and like a ray of sunlight we are the product of our source.

Glimpsing this, my friend reasoned that she actually included the complete range of God's qualities, including those thought traditionally to be masculine. She asked God's help in listing all the qualities she would like a future husband to express. And she committed herself to appreciating and living these qualities! She was guarding herself against the old concepts that we have to partner with the opposite sex to feel complete, to associate with qualities we are told are lacking in our particular gender.

It was a time of great growth. She was grateful to find she could express those masculine qualities she wanted in a husband. Far from being alien to her character as a woman, she found them wonderfully natural. And as she was living them, she was gratefully acknowledging God as their source.

A short while later she met her future husband, only to discover he not only included those wonderful masculine qualities she'd been cherishing in her own experience, but many traditionally thought to be feminine as well. More important, she also found in him a commitment to living that right sense of priority discussed earlier.

Far from being alien to one another, men and women—seen spiritually—share the indivisible body of Christ that Paul describes so wonderfully in First Corinthians (see chap. 12:13, 25). With Paul, let's remember that men and women are "baptized into one body" and "have been all made to drink into one Spirit." And let's forever recall "that there should be no schism in the body"!

—Pope