Reviewing Christian Science, 2

Q. Are the terms, Mind, Spirit, Soul, Principle, Life, Truth, Love, synonymous?

A. They are. They refer to one absolute God. They are also intended to express the nature, essence, and fullness of Almighty God. The attributes of God are justice, mercy, integrity, wisdom, goodness, and so on.—21^st Century Science and Health

 

Think of this: Synonymous means equal, identical. The synonymous terms used to define God, give breadth and depth to consciousness. The terms, Mind, Spirit, Soul, Principle, Life, Truth, Love, expand possibilities and expectations. They remove us from the trappings of human minds, which always come to ends.

The God unseen by physical eyes may seem abstract, however our imagination exceeds our physical senses. Some people call this ability the third eye, or sixth sense but it’s the ability to know and understand God as infinite or divine Mind, Spirit, Soul, Principle, Life, Truth, Love.

It also helps to know what is NOT synonymous. Truth and the Bible are not synonymous. Christian Science and churches of Christ, Scientists are not synonymous. Christian Science and the book, Science and Health, are not synonymous. Human spirit and divine Spirit are not synonymous. Human emotion and Soul are not synonymous.

Christ is not synonymous with Jesus, but Christ is synonymous with Truth.

^” The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. ¹⁵ The spiritual person judges all things, but is himself to be judged by no one. ¹⁶ “For who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?” But we have the mind of Christ.“–II Corinthians 2:14-16

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Reviewing Christian Science, 1

1. What is God?
2. God is bodiless, divine; supreme; infinite Mind, Spirit, Soul, Principle, Life, Truth, Love.—21^st Century Science and Health

 

Think of this: Bodiless is without a body, but not without body. God can’t be put into a form. God can’t be stuffed into a church building or a group of people. God is even more than molecules of an atmosphere because the atmosphere of earth is different from the atmosphere of the moon. Yet God is everywhere. God is presence. God is manifestation. A divine manifestation. Divine, not as better than a lower, but divine as including us all in that which is Godlike. Supreme, not as dominant, but as unmatched by that which is ungodlike.

Infinite Mind relates to endurance, continuation, current completeness. The Psalmist wrote…

Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth!
²     Serve the Lord with gladness!
Come into his presence with singing!

³ Know that the Lord, he is God!
It is he who made us, and we are his;
we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture.

⁴ Enter his gates with thanksgiving,
and his courts with praise!
Give thanks to him; bless his name!

⁵ For the Lord is good;
his steadfast love endures forever,
and his faithfulness to all generations.—Ps. 100

For further reference, re-read the Psalm and replace the words, Lord and his, with each of the seven synonyms of God, Mind, Spirit, Soul, Principle, Life, Truth, Love.

For example, Make a joyful noise to infinite Mind, all the earth! Serve Mind with gladness! Come into Mind’s presence with singing!

Now, let’s deal with the presumption that the words infinite or endure mean to suffer through. As if we’re supposed to put up with something horrible, which is kind of indicated when reading what Jesus Christ said here, “And you will be hated by all for my name’s sake. But the one who endures to the end will be saved.–Mark 13:13

How do we not put up with or endure hate? By loving so much it ends hate. While remembering what Jesus Christ also said, “Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you. For on him God the Father has set his seal.”—John 6:27

Food that perishes is human approval. Don’t suffer the abuse of someone you want to love or someone you want to love you back.

Food that doesn’t perish is God’s approval and support to live a life of honesty and independence. We eat gratitude, forgiveness, and moral courage. We take part in the all-presence of life, truth, and love. We are conscious of God.

 

 

 

Resting life and death in peace

First posted in September 2014

Our culture avoids it, fears it, is attracted to it, and uses it as a threat.

Death.

But every now and then, an anomaly shows up. I met a couple who raised 7 children, successfully, on a farm. The mother told me, “The farm life taught the children about life and death.”

Interesting. She spoke of life and death as equal, mortal elements that shouldn’t absorb so much attention when the true task is to live.

How can we live life and death?

By not making life and death something they are not.

Mortal life and death are not immortal or lasting.

Life isn’t a competition for wealth and fame and human approval. Death isn’t something we escape or dodge.

Life expresses itself through us as spiritual beings. Life is God, manifesting itself, in countless individuality, through us.

Death is the human interpretation of spiritual life unattached to mortality. Someone dies and we realize they are still alive in consciousness.

Human life and death can be beautiful, but it can also be ugly. We read in Matthew 16:21-23:

From that time Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised. ²² And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him, saying, “Far be it from you, Lord! This shall never happen to you.” ²³ But he turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a hindrance to me. For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man.”

I bet it was somewhat of a struggle, but Jesus didn’t focus on human life and death. Christ Jesus lived immortality; he expressed integrity, forgiveness, courage, and wisdom.

Added 2019, from 21st Century Science and Health:

“The complicated mis-creations must finally give place to the glorious forms which we sometimes glimpse through the eye of divine Mind when the mental picture is spiritual and eternal. Take the time to look past the fading, sensational pictures. Gain the true sense of life. Rest your gaze on the unsearchable realm of Mind. Look ahead and act as possessing all power from Truth and Love in whom you have your being.”

Four degrees

It’s Four degrees Fahrenheit outside. Thick ice covers the ground. Wind.

I’m inside a house with a temperature of sixty-four degrees. In awe. And telling myself not to take the warmth for granted. I feel fortunate. The warmth should humble me. Am I desiring humility?

Golden text: Proverbs 22:4*

The reward for humility and fear of the Lord is riches and honor and life.

21st Century Science and Health

Praying fervently for humility doesn’t always mean humility is desired.

The effective prayer is a fervent desire for growth in grace, expressed in patience, humility, love, and good deeds.

Making spiritual power my own

My friend showed me her new car. I was happy for her. She needed a reliable car. It was her car and my happiness.

As for my car, I loaned it to another friend. He was happy I loaned my car to him. To express his gratitude, he cleaned my car. I was happy to loan my car to him.  I was also happy to make the clean car my own. He eventually got his own car and happiness was our own again.

When can we make something our own? What happens when we make a thing or a mental power our own?

We can make something else our own when we work for and earn it. As for a mental power, we can make it our own anytime. And yes, we can tell the difference between what to make our own and what not to. We don’t try to make someone else’s car our own.

But we can discover and make God-given mental power our own. If we don’t, we’re only being happy for or admiring other people for having the power.

Whereas God gave us all the ability to discover spiritual power and make it our own. Spiritual principles are ours. For example, in the 19th century, Mary Baker Eddy explained a spiritual principle, Christian Science, in her book, Science and Health. Christian Science is a thought process that starts and ends with God and healing. Part of making Christian Science my  own was to discover the principle and practice it in everyday life. If I didn’t make it my own, but just admired Eddy, everything got weird. Christian Science got misunderstood and lost. So, to beat the weirdness, I kept discovering and making spirit my own.

When I revised Mary Baker Eddy’s Science and Health, I didn’t make her book my own, I discovered and made Christian Science (a spiritual power) my own.

“Mentally and silently plead the case scientifically for Truth. You may adapt the reasoning to meet the peculiar or general symptoms of the case you treat, but be thoroughly persuaded in your own mind concerning the truth which you think or speak, and you will be the winner.”—21st Century Science and Health

Unraveling mysteries

The mystery of life unravels when I keep admitting it’s a mystery. Otherwise, I’m tempted to assume I have it all figured out.

“Mortal existence is a fantastic mystery. Science and religion make great efforts to explain the mystery, but it is soon learned that for every answer found there are at least two more questions.”—from science & religion to God

The trick is entertaining imaginative answers. Instead of assuming cellphones benefit society by providing access to immediate calls for help or contact with others, entertain the answer that cellphones divide the physical senses of sight, hearing, and tactile feeling.

In the past, we needed to be physically present with others to communicate. The invention of phones separated sight from hearing. We could hear others but not see them.

Cellphones, with the ability to convey images, separate sight and feeling. We can see others but not feel them physically.

It’s interesting. The physical senses are a mystery yet show us their limitations and divisibility.

“Mysteries disappear through discovery and revelation. Scientists, meteorologists, physicians, and computer programmers remove mystery from weather, the body, or electronics. Old-time restraints become extinct when science modifies theories such as when absolutes were replaced with the theory of relativity. Time and space have wrinkled as we fly around the earth in jets. Matter particles are dodged or switched out, no longer seen as solid mass. We can likewise remove mystery from the study of nature and life through spiritual knowledge and divine consciousness.”—from science & religion to God

So, why trust the physical senses when it comes to our spirituality? Why not keep building our relationship with spiritual sense?

“Even if we believe the physical senses are necessary for our existence, hope shows us that we still can change the human concept of life. Our ideals have changed for the better in the past and it can continue. If not, we can start now with a better ideal. We can know Spirit. We can know our self spiritually and practically and act on the higher ideal. We can detect the evidence of the reality of Spirit through our spiritual senses.

“No matter where we are, we can use our spiritual senses to commune with God and be governed by Love.

“To be controlled by divine Mind is not to be controlled by hypnotism, human cultures, theories, crime, drugs, or fantasies. We learn to utilize spiritual sense—the constant conscious capacity to understand the all-acting infinite Spirit.” —from science & religion to God

 

 

What about my own personality?

I’m still learning how to worship God.

It helps for me to observe and think about how other people worship God, especially people who lived or live spiritual lives. But I remind myself not to get absorbed in their personalities because that would blur my own worshipfulness of God.

For example, the personality of Christ Jesus, which is only hear-say, appears to be calm. And so I try to be calm, and then worship God. But, I’m sort of a hyper-person, so it really doesn’t work. And that’s okay. Because I can’t really worship God through a specific human personality, calm or hyper.

I caught this idea when reading this from 21st Century Science and Health:

“We worship spiritually only as we cease to worship materially. The devotion to Spirit is the soul of spirituality. Worshipping through the medium of human personalities is not productive. Human-made rituals are but types and shadows of true worship. “The true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth.” (John)

Now, I watch my efforts to worship God, a bit closer. Am I doing it through my human personality? Or, am I worshipping God through spirit and truth?