Start Summer with a new name! A Lesson Met on “God the Only Cause and Creator” For June 2-8, 2003 by Corde Hanzlik, C.S.
It’s time for a name game in our “God the Only Cause and Creator” lesson treat! In the Bible, names mean a great deal to identify the nature, character and personage of an individual. Just as your name identifies you to your friends or Kermit T. Frog as green. God clearly gives us HIS name in the Golden Text – mountain former, wind creator, tells man what to think, and He is everywhere – The Lord, The God of Hosts. How does He know us? Go to the 4th marker of the Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures for our purpose of studying this week’s Lesson and begin imagine your “new” name. A name not new to God as He knows our names. Rather, we are finding our identity as His children, to become new and of course, never in matter. There’s even a city that gets a “new” name in this Lesson. Our purpose in studying this Lesson? To gain more correct views of God and man (me, us). Remember, that at the end of your study of this Lesson, you will have a “new” name, plus a new way to see the new city you live in.
The Responsive Reading clearly establishes who the true Creator of the universe as His Word declares. From God’s “innermost nature” He creates All.
1st Section: God’s Word really has no beginning, but is a principle (Principle, as we know), a law of established fact. Not only is His Word the first word, it is the last and final word. As the Psalm tells us the earth is full and is always renewed.
S&H Mrs. Eddy gives us her definition of God, His name, as Creator and the total fullness of His creation, but also the absolute nothingness of anything contrary to Him – no opposite, no name. This definition is a great basis for treatment. If God is All, how can there possibly be anything unlike Him or within His Kingdom? There can’t! The 2nd marker proclaims again the “Principle of creation” as God. And what are we? The sons and daughters of God. (Not a bad name!) As we grasp this order as we are told to do in the 3rd marker, more names for God are listed – Spirit, Life, Truth, Love.
2nd Section: Here we have the story of God speaking to Abram, His major founder prophet and leader. God promises Abram greatness and a huge blessing. The word used in the Bible for a promise is a covenant. Basically, the covenant is that God says He will be the steadfast God of Abram’s generations (children and heirs) if the generations revere God as the one and only God. Abram becomes the “father of nations”. So Abram (father exalted) gets his new name, character as Abraham (father of many) even though he is an old man to material sense. Of course, God is talking about a spiritual commitment and devotion. Abraham and his people, as do we, strive to fully understand what that spiritual commitment is. Like Abraham, we must be obedient to the covenant to be blessed by it. It is our covenant, too.
Could Abraham be our name? The qualities that Mrs. Eddy gives him are wonderful. So are we as a little child (S&H 323) to leave the old for the new – name? With our gaze focused on God, how can we go wrong? But, we will have demands she tells us (261-2).
3rd Section: Time for another name change. Abraham’s wife, Sarai. What do we learn from Sarai? Don’t laugh at God’s statements. He can do anything He wants! Sarah as she is called, laughed at God for His pronouncement for her to bear children. She looked through material eyes of limitation that said that she was too old to have children. God doesn’t know age or limit. So can we? Sarah had a son, Issac, just as God told her that she would.
In the Science and Health Mrs. Eddy confirms that life is not dependent on material sexual identities. So what is a child, but a divine idea formed in Mind. The birth of a “new” child as Mrs. Eddy states “should be detached from mortal thought and material conception”. (463) Aren’t we all “new” children, as we understand our spiritual birthright as God’s child? Of course! Nor can we cause our mothers any more suffering – that includes the terrible twos, teenage-hood, or any “age stage”. We are the perfect model (260).
4th Section: This section sounds very frightening. Our understanding of God as a nice guy could be a bit shaken. But what is the message really? Stay with godlike standards and we are blessed (covenant?). If we fall for the sinful distractions of matter, we have trouble, not because God punishes us, but we have chosen voluntarily to be disobedient and have no protection. Compare it to a traffic signal. If we run the red light we are giving up all protection that a green light affords. We may suffer some consequences – a ticket or worse. It also involves others. How selfish and unthinking! God’s love is unconditional. Let’s stay within the blessings of obedience to that green light. There really isn’t an option since error, evil is a lie that has no power. This is summed up in the Science and Health beautifully. We rejoice that as “man governed by Mind …can triumph”.(231)
5th Section: Jesus heals the man of leprosy. Three specific things to think about in this healing –
1. “the man was full of leprosy” – full of leprous thoughts, full of himself, self-centered, inward looking
2. why did the man want Jesus to heal him? Motive – was the man truly aware of what Jesus was about? Was his humility sincere or was he looking for social and religious reward? (Remember that in Jewish law it was believed that if a person was sick or deformed it was because he had somehow sinned.)
3. seeing the “self, ego” of the man, is that why Jesus told him to tell no one?
See what answers you come up with.
Is the answer in the text of Science and Health? Physical sense, self-sense, is the problem, isn’t it? Jesus saw through it though and healed, actually touching the “untouchable” to heal him. The questions have no answer but what you give them. Jesus may well have healed the man to prove the all-redeeming law of God. A definite ingredient in all of Jesus’ healings.
What is our basis for our health? Not human knowledge. (124) Our “divine right, heavenly bestowed harmony” is intact and there is no other erring mortal sense” – Mind’s law. (467 and 253)
6th Section: Here’s the section with the final name change. We’ve had Abram, new Abraham; Sarai, new Sarah; now, new heaven, new earth, new Jerusalem. (Take a field trip into the Glossary and look up New Jerusalem, Zion).
We also have a repeat of the covenant in Rev 21:3 “Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and He will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God”. Great foundation!
Aren’t we in this New Jerusalem that “lieth foursquare”? You bet. We always have been. So aren’t we the “new” man? What is your new name, your new self, as a resident of this heavenly city?
Editor’s Note: If changes are coming that you’re not looking forward to, consider how a friend used a revelation from Revelation. She was preparing to move to a big, hot Southern ciity in mid-summer when she read anew the how “John saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, . . . prepared asd a bride adorned for her husband.” (Rev. 21:2) She loves weddings so much that she took this as a cue to see her new city as a beautiful bride and since then has seen nothing but the beauty, light and love of a wedding being expressed everywhere.
