Who am I? And what does this have to do with whether sin, disease, and death are real?

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Who am I? And what does this have to do with whether sin, disease, and death are real?
Metaphysical application ideas on the Christian Science Quarterly Bible Lesson subject:

“Are Sin, Disease, and Death Real?”
for October 13, 2024

by Kerry Jenkins, CS, of House Springs, MO
kerry.helen.jenkins@gmail.com • 314-406-0041

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INTRODUCTION:

Have you ever really thought about the implication of being made in God’s image, after God’s likeness, as it states in Genesis 1 of the Bible? I mean, really, what does that look like? Does that image have form? Does it have individuality, or identity?  Does it contain any matter, if God is entirely Spirit, as the Bible also tells us? If not, and Christian Science certainly agrees with the Bible that man is not made of matter–at least in the first account of creation, then where do sin, disease, and death figure in man’s individuality? This is the real question that we are answering this week. A right understanding of man’s individuality is key to freedom from sin, disease and death. And, just for fun, there are 16 mentions of the word “individuality” in this lesson!

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GOLDEN TEXT AND RESPONSIVE READING:

Our Golden Text starts out with the big question: “…Who am I, O Lord God?” (2^nd Samuel 7:18 Who (to 1st ?) This is taken from a “conversation” David was having in prayer with God. He is humbly acknowledging his place in the scheme of God’s establishment of Israel as a nation under David’s rule. It seems that this humble question of identity is shared by a Biblical predecessor, Moses. In our Responsive Reading Moses asks the same question of God: ” Who am I…?”. In this case he has been asked by God to lead the Hebrew people out of slavery under Egyptian rule.

The true answer to these great spiritual leaders’ identity questions, lies in a spiritual understanding of God first, and then of man, as a result. God answers Moses’ question about the identity of God with “I AM”. This is God’s identity. How cool is it that I AM is God? How far away can we be from God if we are made in the image and likeness of BEING. I AM is our being too. This is the only true “I”. We can take steps to identify ourselves with that spiritual, true BEING, and find our true individuality and freedom from the “big three” in our title question of this week’s lesson. If we are only image, only the likeness of I AM, or divine BEING, then there is no space there for reality in sin, disease, or even in death–because these do not exist in divine BEING. 

How this plays out in our human experience is detailed as we go through the next five sections of this lesson. It is certainly a step by step demonstration, leading to the ultimate vision of man when Jesus shows himself to his disciples in the transfiguration in our last section. So, maybe we have some work to do before we experience this kind of transfiguration, or change of form from a material to a spiritual appearance, but this doesn’t mean that there are not many, many, rewarding landmarks of healing along the way that are worth their weight in gold as we go through the process of repentance (re-thinking), spiritual baptism (purifying our senses), and regeneration (seeing ourselves afresh from a purely spiritual standpoint, untouched by sin, sickness, or death).

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SECTION 1: MOSES’ NEW VIEW OF GOD WAS TRANSFORMATIONAL.

As Mary Baker Eddy points out: “Moses advanced a nation to the worship of God in Spirit instead of matter, and illustrated the grand human capacities of being bestowed by immortal Mind.” (citation S6/200:4) He advanced an entire nation! This one humble man brought forward a new way of thinking about God, and in the process, he also showed how this affects the human capacities—and so — how this applies to our day to day living. How did he do this? Well, it seems that he was willing to set aside his personal sense of self, his own sense of inadequacy, human limitations, and even his history.

Moses fully engaged with the message from that burning bush and obediently (though not without questioning) embraced the call. It’s easy to think that if we each got such a call from a burning bush that isn’t consumed by fire, that we too would have the courage to answer God’s call to lead mankind out of slavery — or even just ourselves. But actually, we each have received, and are receiving that call every day.

Isn’t the Holy Spirit calling on each of us on a daily basis to leave behind whatever would separate us from divine Truth, Life, and Love? Isn’t the call crystal-clear and burning in our hearts? If you think it’s not, then try pausing for a minute or two and being still enough to just open thought to divine Consciousness. The call is there, but in our frenzied busy-ness, we often miss it. Moses gives the Children of Israel (and us) the Ten Commandments. The first two are in our first citation (cit. B1/Exodus 20:1–3, 5 (to :). Having no other gods before divine Love, and not bowing down to any other “gods” is no less practical and profound today than it was so many centuries ago!

Taking “the inspired Word of the Bible” (SH497:3)spiritually, as it is intended for us to take, we can consider what gods we have made of any number of things in our lives: money, popularity, human success, food, technology, sex, entertainment, thrills…the list is pretty endless. But, it all boils down to allowing matter – our love of it – to separate us from our natural, burning desire for deep, spiritual satisfaction.

Being spiritually satisfied means we aren’t looking to anything but to God for our joy and peace. This, in turn, is a transformational way to live that frees us from slavery to sin, disease, and even death. Matter is subject to these three errors. Spirit is not – and man, as “God’s spiritual idea, individual, perfect, eternal” is likewise exempt. (citation S3/115:15) Truly gaining even a bit of understanding of our spiritual nature, our spiritual individuality, “…makes man more real, more formidable in truth, and enables him to conquer sin, disease, and death.” (citation S4/317:18-20) And isn’t this what we want our understanding of Spirit to bring us–the ability to make humanly manifest the spiritual nature of God and man?

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SECTION 2: OVERCOMING OUR BELIEF IN AN “EVIL MAN”

The Psalmist articulates it well when he says: “I have seen the wicked in great power, and spreading himself like a green bay tree.” (cit. B7/Psalm 37:35) Sometimes, this sure is the tempting picture! But I love that he goes on to say: “Yet he passed away, and lo, he was not: yea, I sought him, but he could not be found.” (cit. B7/Psalm 37:37) There are some fun translations of this passage such as this one in the New Living Translation: “I have seen wicked and ruthless people flourishing like a tree in its native soil. But when I looked again, they were gone! Though I searched for them, I could not find them!” And this one from The Message: “I saw Wicked bloated like a toad, croaking pretentious nonsense. The next time I looked there was nothing–a punctured bladder, vapid and limp.”

All of this points to the ultimate powerlessness of an evil man or anything that which would appear to oppose divine, omnipotent Love. Evil, or sinful man may appear to have its day, but it is nothing, no-thing, and so, like darkness, it has no staying power in the presence of light. Sometimes it would seem that we have trauma from past experience in the form of an evil man or woman. Our source of healing comes in the full embrace of the fact that man’s true identity has its source in Love, and Love does not include any kind of abuse. It is a “re-telling” of the story to include only the spiritual facts, and allowing the material appearances to fall to ash. Much like paper holds its form momentarily while it is first on fire and then dissolves into ash, so our human stories can crumble in the radiance of spiritual truth–the truth that God only creates and sustains goodness, harmony, love, truth, and life. This is not a bland denial of the challenges that we may have experienced. This is a radical transformation of thought to conceive of spiritual reality right here and now, staying in that present “now” where this Truth is always and only revealed. One passage that I alluded to in the introduction to this met is helpful in giving us guidance as we look to put off our own false sense of identity.

Mary Baker Eddy says: “Through repentance, spiritual baptism, and regeneration, mortals put off their material beliefs and false individuality.” (citation S10/242:1-3) These three guideposts can help us as we work through any personal efforts to shed a sense of our own “wickedness”, or simply lack of alignment with God. Repentance is a rethinking of the nature of things, in this case who we are, who God is. It is a search for true self-knowledge. Spiritual baptism, in its simplest form, is purification from a material sense of self and man in general, to a spiritually true view. Regeneration is a fresh, wholly new, and growing sense of self that does not carry with it any burden of the past. Eddy has some sharp observations on p. 85 of Miscellaneous Writings about regeneration if you are interested in further study.

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SECTION 3: ARE WE HEARING WHAT THE CHRIST IS TELLING US ABOUT MAN/OURSELVES?

In Acts (3:22/cit. B10) we are reminded that Moses told us of the coming Messiah, and that “…him ye shall hear in all things whatsoever he shall say.” Then, ironically, we are told the story in this section, of Jesus healing the man who was born blind. In this story no one “hears” or listens to what the healed man tells them. And many, or at least the Church officers, don’t even believe that Jesus could possibly have healed the man — or that at least Jesus was not connected with God. So, in essence, here they are not listening or “hearing” at all! Just as they didn’t hear Moses on many occasions as the Children of Israel travelled over years through the desert. And just as Pharaoh didn’t hear or listen to what Moses told him. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking that we are exceptions to the rule that mortal thought dismisses spiritual truth, doubts healing, questions Love’s constant care, and distrusts God’s governing power.

By healing a man born blind, Jesus revealed to man, for all time, our true identity. This is an identity free of physical disease, or in this case of any genetic defect of blindness. He came so that we might “hear” this good news and practice it to the best of our understanding. I love that the people in this story from John 9 (cit. B11/John 9:1–38) doubt that the man healed is even the same man that was blind. Maybe he’s just someone who looks a lot like him! They are questioning the individuality of this man, but not in the spiritual sense! The man was no longer blind. Blindness was his “identity,” therefore this must be someone else. Maybe this is a call for us to question what we are identifying with in our own experience. Are we holding onto a past story, as mentioned earlier? Are we thinking that we must be subject to something because our parents are subject to it, or our friends? Are we clinging to a sense of self that we would rather not be attached to but feel helpless to let go? This is our opportunity to really hear what the Christ is telling us about ourselves. Remember, Christ is the great communicator from God to man. Christ is directly speaking to our consciousness and revealing exactly what Jesus taught and practiced about man–that we are worthy, whole, loved, and loveable. This truth telling can enrage the mortal consciousness and make it appear to resist this claim with arguments that seem sound. This false consciousness will build a whole defense around itself, shoring up stories of inadequacy, shortcoming, failure, and all of it wrapped in a package of history. But we don’t have to listen. We can hear the Christ, Truth, and what it presents to us about ourselves. We can listen and reap the freedom and wholeness that come with welcoming that Christ consciousness as our own.

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SECTION 4: MAN’S INDIVIDUALITY CAN’T BE CUT OFF FROM LIFE/BEING.

In this section (cit. B13/Luke 7:11–16), Jesus raises the young man in Nain from death. His compassionate love for the man’s mother is the power behind this act. This may seem a radical and out of reach act for the rest of us, but there are ways to take steps in this direction, and there are many examples in our periodicals of people overcoming death.

Mary Baker Eddy herself brought back people from death, and certainly from the brink of death. A good starting point in demonstrating this great task is to spiritualize the idea of raising the dead. What are we raising ourselves from? Is it a life lived without joy and vitality? Is it being “dead” to feeling any sense of real joy and inspiration in Church? Are we growing spiritually in a vigorous way — growing things are living things!

You get the idea. As we demonstrate eternal life in these “smaller” ways we too are proving that stagnation, rigidity, and mortality do not have the “final” word. We are opposing the belief of life and intelligence in matter with a vigorous demonstration of our God given spiritual dominion. These “smaller” acts of rising from a deadened consciousness are what build within us those fires of spiritual curiosity, vigor, and renewal. They are what make our lives worth living and make death loom less as a dark fear on our horizon.

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SECTION 5: A GLIMPSE OF SPIRITUAL INDIVIDUALITY HERE AND NOW.

One of the things that Jesus showed us was that there really is no barrier between man and God. If God is the “I AM” and man reflects this spiritual “individuality”, if you will, then man must of necessity be one with his source. Isaiah says it poetically (cit. B15/Isa 25:1, 7, 8) “And he will destroy in this mountain the face of the covering cast over all people, and the veil that is spread over all nations.” This passage is referring to the veil that was traditionally spread over the dead. It is declaring that God has overcome death, any shroud that covers our mortal thought, our limited sense of being.

With God as our infinite individuality we are free to grow in our infinite understanding of man’s true limitless being. We no longer must accept the so-called laws of matter as the laws by which we must live and die. In fact, we overcome the suggestions that matter is a law every time we experience healing in Christian Science.

APPLICATION IDEA: Just this week I awoke with a lot of lower back pain. This is not a common challenge for me though I am physically active. At first, I did some stretching but it was too painful and I quickly realized that I didn’t need a material solution to a physical problem. I needed to rise to a higher view of myself as a spiritual individual. I needed to ask that question: “who am I?” Am I a physical being subject to material laws that affect muscles/tendons/bones? Or, am I a spiritual individual, one with the only I AM, fully expressing mobility, freedom, flexibility and movement.

I didn’t want to work from a standpoint of human will, but I do love to move and so I quietly went for one of what I call my “prayer walks”. I began to give the whole situation a Christian Science treatment, acknowledging only the laws of Life which are vigorous, aligned, strong. As I walked I gained confidence that even with some discomfort I was simply “living, moving, and having my being in God” as Paul tells us (Acts 17:28). I dropped any concern for further injury or pain. Since then I have been able to walk and workout freely. It was not an instant healing where all pain disappeared, but all concern about it was gone and it has not hindered me since! 

Whether facing sin or a sense of separation from Love, disease, or even death, we find greater and greater freedom as we discover more about our true individuality in Spirit, inseparable from Love and Life. We may not see it in the same way as the disciples witnessed it when Jesus was transfigured. (cit. B14/Matthew 17:1–5) But we can be equally speechless as we diligently develop a clearer present consciousness of divine Love, while we walk, work, drive, make dinner, or interact with others. Our “here and now” awareness of Love’s presence brings us into harmony with Life which is always good, whole, and vibrantly active. This is definitely available to us in any given moment when we take that moment to be aware and conscious. In that presence of consciousness, we are likely to catch a glimpse of that “burning bush” call that Love is making to each of us, all the time, to rise above a material, false view of self.

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FYI: WE HOPE SOON TO HAVE LINED-UP FUNDING, materials and labor to replace the failing, 24-year-old incandescent light fixtures & dimmers in Mary’s Chapel with LED uplighting to give reflective, inspiring illumination from a (hoped-for) new white ceiling above the two, big fans. Estimated funds still needed for all this = $10,847.

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We are deeply grateful for EVERY GIFT of love and
pledge of much needed support,
The CedarS Team

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