“Popular theology makes God tributary to man, coming at human call; whereas the reverse is true in Science. Men must approach God reverently, doing their own work in obedience to divine law, if they would fulfil the intended harmony of being.”
Those words from “Unity of Good” (p. 13) by the discoverer of Christian Science, Mary Baker Eddy, caused me to ask myself if I too was calling on God to know about my problems and help me fix them.
Christian Science teaches that we must first approach God reverently. This points our thought in the right direction, to an understanding of the true nature of God and man, which is what enabled Christ Jesus to heal. We must reach out to God with the desire to understand and honor Him, not to get Him to be aware of false mortal beliefs of life in matter.
We tend to assume that if God doesn’t know about our problems, He can’t solve them. But consider the principle of mathematics. It doesn’t know anything of the problems we solve. It doesn’t know about mistakes that are made either. The principle or law, when correctly understood and applied, brings about the intended results.
Just so, we learn in Christian Science that God, as divine Principle, can be aware of only His perfection. And the only creation that exists is God’s creation, whose highest ideas are His sons and daughters, made in His image and likeness, as stated in the first chapter of Genesis.
God is All-in-all, and God is Spirit. Since He is wholly good, and all that He creates reflects His goodness, one must conclude that God did not create evil and knows nothing of it. And since He is Spirit, all that He creates is spiritual. He did not create matter. This means evil and matter must be errors – false beliefs in something besides God, good.
So the work we are to do in obedience to God’s law is to rise up and out of the belief of life in matter, of so-called human existence, to the consciousness of God, the one Mind. If God, Spirit, knows nothing of evil or of a material creation, then neither can we.
After three years of demonstrating his oneness with God and healing every manner of sickness and sin, Christ Jesus promised, “He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do” (John 14:12).
Years ago, I had to demonstrate this important concept of reconciling my thoughts to God when my husband didn’t show up the night before we were to move back to the United States from Hong Kong. He was devastated that a job he loved had ended, and from his point of view, nothing could compare to what he had just lost. We had no jobs and no home.
Feeling overwhelmed, he went out for a walk and said he’d be home by 10:00 p.m. But at 3:00 a.m. he had not returned, and we were supposed to catch a plane in a matter of hours.
I wanted God to fix my husband, who seemed to be abandoning me, and to fix me and all the anxieties and fears I felt. That didn’t work! So instead of starting my prayer from the standpoint of a missing husband and a frightened wife, I decided to start with God and His perfection.
I remember gaining an immediate sense of peace with the realization that one of those scenarios was false, material evidence, and the other was the eternal truth of being – God’s omniscience, omnipresence, and omnipotence.
I reasoned that if God is all-knowing, then my husband couldn’t be hiding or escaping from God’s perfect knowledge of him. If God is ever present, then my husband could feel God’s presence, comfort, and love right where he was. And if God is all-power, then no fear, anxiety, or uncertainty could overwhelm either of us.
In half an hour he arrived home with a smile on his face. He had indeed heard God, and he had been given explicit instructions on something very special that he was to do. He looked like a new man. And he obeyed God’s guidance, which led us both to whole new careers, working together for the next 15 years.
It’s our duty to rise up and out of the belief of any life in matter, separate from God. When we do, we’re able to prove, step by step, that the truth of perfect God and perfect man is a present and eternal reality.
Adapted from an article published in the February 2025 issue of The Christian Science Journal.
