Recently my dad showed me an album he had found with family photos dating back to the 1800s. This fascinating collection sparked much conversation about the past and our family’s history.
I began to wonder about my ancestors. The common belief is that we are the beneficiaries of strengths or victims of weaknesses, diseases, and unpleasant idiosyncrasies passed down through generations. Thus the theory of heredity casts a shadow over many lives, breeding fear.
But Christian Science shows that heredity is actually a false concept based on the belief that we each live in a body created through material processes and governed by physical laws. We can see through this by understanding that the all-good God, Spirit, is our real source and that all that we possess is derived directly from Him.
Perceiving ourselves as spiritual takes human heredity completely out of the equation, so we can’t be weighed down by the mistaken notion that we are doomed to suffer as a result of genetics.
In the Christian Science textbook, “Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures,” Mary Baker Eddy writes, “The transmission of disease or of certain idiosyncrasies of mortal mind would be impossible if this great fact of being were learned, – namely, that nothing inharmonious can enter being, for Life is God” (p. 228).
Instead of believing that we are cursed or blessed by what our ancestors suffered or enjoyed, we can reason from the spiritual fact that we are all eternally blessed by our true Parent – God. Science and Health states, “In Science man is the offspring of Spirit. The beautiful, good, and pure constitute his ancestry. His origin is not, like that of mortals, in brute instinct, nor does he pass through material conditions prior to reaching intelligence. Spirit is his primitive and ultimate source of being; God is his Father, and Life is the law of his being” (p. 63).
Christ Jesus rejected the belief in heredity when he healed a man who was born blind. The disciples considered the sins of the man’s parents to be a possible cause of his blindness, while Jesus rejected the belief that mortal history could have any effect on the eternal perfection of God’s child. This restored the man’s vision (see John 9:1-7).
Several years ago, I found myself experiencing a sharp pain in my lower abdomen. My concern increased when it went on for a few days.
That Wednesday, my branch Church of Christ, Scientist, held a preparatory meeting for an upcoming Christian Science lecture that we were sponsoring in the local jail. Our speaker had worked as a Christian Science chaplain in jails in the area and had a great rapport with the inmates. During the meeting, he brought out the need for seeing each one as God’s whole and wholly good child with no tainted history – only the present purity reflected by all of us as expressions of God.
The lecturer’s words about letting go of the past made me realize that I had unwittingly accepted the myth of genetics. I remembered that a family member had had an intestinal problem years earlier for which he’d had surgery. The misperception that heredity could cause me to suffer from this as well needed to be corrected. The condition was baseless because not created by God.
After the meeting with our lecturer, I went to our church’s Wednesday evening testimony meeting thinking about these healing concepts. By the end of the service, the pain was completely gone. And it never returned. I was healed and so grateful.
If we look at our family history through a spiritual lens, we don’t have to see human lives of joy and sorrow, progress and struggle, health and disease. Instead we can see man’s never-ending development as God’s beloved creation. The true understanding of creation eliminates beliefs of heredity and reveals all of us as continuously unfolding ideas embraced by our true source – God – and forever pure and free.
Adapted from an article published in the July 1, 2024, issue of the Christian Science Sentinel.
