The real mission—be close to God

There’s no better way to get a grip on reality than to have an intimate talk with God about your problems and aspirations! That’s just how this week’s Christian Science Bible Lesson on “Reality” starts off. In the Responsive Reading (from Job, chapters 35–37, 42), a man named Elihu speaks about God and admonishes his friend Job to magnify God’s majestic works. But Job talks directly to God about them.

Section I shows Moses getting instructions from God in what the Bible wonderfully describes as a friendly talk (see Ex. 33:11, citation 2). While Moses talked intimately with God, theirs was not, strictly speaking, a private conversation, because it was recorded for anyone to read. To me this illustrates that the communication we have from God can at the same time bless the whole human family.

Passages in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy follow right along with this promise of intimacy with God, declaring just what a friendly talk with God would reveal: “To grasp the reality and order of being in its Science, you must begin by reckoning God as the divine Principle of all that really is” (p. 275, cit. 2). Section III amplifies the promise of direct communication with the Creator through the words of His Son: “Jesus said, ‘Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God’ [Truth]” (p. 341, cit. 13). As I studied this Lesson, I found my own desire growing to “look deep into realism instead of accepting only the outward sense of things” (p. 129, Sect. I, cit. 6). It’s through the prayer of conversation with God that we experience such an influx of reality, and the mental freedom and spiritual insight that bring healing.

Section II shows that such insightfulness reveals our current capability as prophets. God can open up our eyes to behold wonderful things out of His law (see Ps. 119:18, cit. 5). Such an outlook offers protection from the intrusions of popular matter-based views of life. As the old saying puts it, “All the water in all the seven seas cannot sink a boat. Only the water that gets inside can do that.” A prophetic outlook keeps the destructive images of materiality from getting into our thoughts, and disturbing our lives.

Prophets play a very important role in the Bible; one whole collection of Old Testament books is called the Prophetic Writings. In these writings we hear the prophets thundering away at the injustices around them. The Hebraic tradition held that the highest form of prophetic work was healing. Elijah and Elisha were just such early healing prophets. In Section II the living presence of this healing power is shown to be so potent that it is described as coming like “a chariot of fire, and horses of fire” (II Kings 2:11, cit. 6). I find the ancient Scriptures reminding me of the seismic effect that God’s healing power has on the world. It may really shake things up and require a reevaluation of some accepted norms and practices.

The connection to prophets continues in Section V, where Jesus is called a prophet because of his healing works (see John 9, cit. 15), thereby aligning the Saviour with the great healing tradition of the ancients. The man who declares this fact is being harangued by a surrounding crowd and Temple authorities to deny that Jesus has healed him of blindness. But he won’t deny it.

For me, this story takes us beyond the wonderful physical healing of blindness to show the transformation of someone from a life of dependency to one of independent courage. The man no longer accepts “the outward sense of things,” but becomes a spokesperson for a new understanding of reality. He announces: “Since the world began was it not heard that any man opened the eyes of one that was born blind. If this man [Jesus] were not of God, he could do nothing” (John 9:32, 33).

For his remarkable vision, the man is thrown out of the temple—a hard reward for defending the power of spiritual healing in the presence of those who would not accept it. Yet his courageous declaration led directly to a revelatory talk with Jesus, in which he reveals his Messianic mission, one of a very few times he does so.

As I studied this Lesson, it seemed clearer than ever that Jesus’ mission was rooted in his discernment of the spiritual reality of God’s kingdom, already active and present. Section V describes the mission that becomes our own, as we look deeper into the divine realism: “Entirely separate from the belief and dream of material living, is the Life divine, revealing spiritual understanding and the consciousness of man’s dominion over the whole earth. This understanding casts out error and heals the sick, and with it you can speak ‘as one having authority’ ” (Science and Health, p. 14, cit. 26).

Jesus showed the way to live in the daily reality of God’s kingdom.

David Robertson earned a Masters degree in theology at Bangor (Maine) Theological Seminary and is continuing his Bible study at Bard College’s Institute of Advanced Theology.

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