Day 250: Genesis i.1

501-503:5

This creation consists of the unfolding of spiritual ideas and their identities, which are embraced in the infinite Mind and forever reflected.

2010

Day 282: At War with an Idea

565:6-567:13

Mary Baker Eddy makes an interesting point at the end of this reading:

Against Love, the dragon warreth not long, for he is killed by the divine Principle. Truth and Love prevail against the dragon because the dragon cannot war with them.

The dragon is at war with Love but he is killed by divine Principle. Materiality cannot destroy an idea. There have certainly been, and still are plenty of dictators, tyrants, and politicians willing to disprove this.

The idea remains.

Day 278: Line of Creation

556:3-557:27

I’ve been working on harmony this year. Several personal situations seem to keep cropping up that show me I have much more work to do. Mary Baker Eddy says harmony is increasing as we rise spiritually:

Christian Science reveals harmony as proportionately increasing as the line of creation rises towards spiritual man, – towards enlarged understanding and intelligence; but in the line of the corporeal senses, the less a mortal knows of sin, disease, and mortality, the better for him, – the less pain and sorrow are his.

She makes in interesting point her. I’ve always thought of ignoring materiality but Mary Baker Eddy pointedly says to know less, instead of ignore. That implies, to me, an active state of refusing to be educated in such areas.

That’s in interesting idea. I’m going to pray on that today.

Day 277: What you say about error

554:8-556:2

I’ve been working on two ideas lately: 1) Harmony is all, & 2) Health is all. Harmony and health are, spiritually speaking, the same thing and can easily be synonyms for God. It is easy to confuse material health with spiritual health so an idea from the reading helped to clarify this difference for me [rearranged for meaning]:

Mortal: who made me?

Error: God made you.

The first effort of error has been and is to impute to God the creation of whatever is sinful and mortal; but infinite Mind sets at naught such a mistaken belief.

I need to keep my prayers focused on spiritual health because that is the only kind there is.

Another statement in the reading:

An inquirer once said to the discoverer of Christian Science: “I like your explanations of truth, but I do not comprehend what you say about error.”

Day 276: Material Source

552:13-554:7

This chapter is about the two stories in Genesis. It seems to me if someone picks up this book for spiritual growth, they will understand the significant difference between the two stories. If they are reading this book for a quick and thoughtless healing, they might as well go to a doctor because they aren’t getting the point. But since Mary Baker Eddy does spend so much time on the science of the story, I assume she thinks there might be a third kind of audience reading the book – someone who cares very much about the science of materiality. You can get loads of inspiration or insight if material science if taken figuratively but the true meeting of material science and spirituality is usually a disaster.

From a material source flows no remedy for sorrow, sin, and death, for the redeeming power, from the ills they occasion, is not in egg or in dust.

Day 275: A Test

550:15-552:12

In the book, Mary Baker Eddy provides several tests with two choices where only one can be correct. These tests are summarized in the two stories: either there is a God and he is all (Gen. 1), or there is only materiality (Gen. 2).

These tests work for me because I know there is a God and I know materiality isn’t all.

She provides another test of this kind in this reading:

Either Mind produces, or it is produced. If Mind is first, it cannot produce its opposite in quality and quantity, called matter. If matter is first, it cannot produce Mind. Like produces like.

Day 274: The Great Observer

548:18-550:14

In this reading Mary Baker Eddy goes through the idea of generation for an egg or from self-division. She is discussing material creation as well as material, scientific discovery. There are two tones that eek out of the reading. The first is that if you start with birth, you end in death, which is the second story of Genesis. The second is that focusing on material discovery means you miss the spiritual discovery.

At this point, however, even this great observer [Agissiz] mistakes nature, forsakes Spirit as the divine origin of creative Truth, and allows matter and material law to usurp the prerogatives of omnipotence.

I’m going to work with observation and prerogatives today.

Day 273: Harmony

546:23-548:17

I’ve been praying about harmony this year, mostly about my son but there have been other issues. So anytime Mary Bakery Eddy uses that word, I take notice.

We see that man has never lost his spiritual estate and his eternal harmony.

Funny that she uses estate. The thought of both home and substance have been on my mind. I’ll come up with other ideas for estate as I work with this today.

And my sentence with blanks, just to extend the thought:

We see that man has never lost his spiritual _______ and his eternal _______.

 

What would you put in the spaces?

Day 272: The Deep Divinity

544:28-546:22

In this reading Mary Baker Eddy makes a few points about the two stories that I would like to note them:

• If Mind, God, creates error, that error must exist in the divine Mind, and this assumption of error would dethrone the perfection of Deity.
• …mortals should so improve material belief by thought tending spiritually upward as to destroy materiality.
• Material, erroneous belief reverses understanding and truth.

She makes a point at the end of the reading that Genesis and Revelation

seem more obscure than other portions of the Scripture, because they cannot possibly be interpreted from a material standpoint. To the author, they are transparent, for they contain the deep divinity of the Bible.

Day 271: The Purpose of 2 Stories

542:27-544:27

I didn’t think much about Christian Science Treatments or know the details until I took class instruction. That isn’t to say the information was secret; I just wasn’t interested in pursuing it. But now that I’m a few days back from annual association of class instruction, and it ended with example treatments, they are on my mind.

These two stories are so clearly different in every possible way. I’m sure there is a scholarly reason for including both, just as the four gospels recount the same stories of Jesus (sort of). But from a figurative perspective, a spiritual perspective, they appear to be parts of an original treatment.

There are two quotes in this reading that hit home for me.

…a material creation which followed the spiritual, – a creation so wholly apart from God’s, that Spirit had no participation in it.

And,

man exists because God exists

Day 270: Cain & Abel

540:25-542:26

I never did like the story of Cain and Abel. It is a childhood disagreement taken to an extreme. We want to teach our children (and people in general) to love then we, as Christians, start with these awful stories from the Bible.

Mary Baker Eddy points out two jobs of Truth:

• Truth, through her eternal laws, unveils error.
• Truth causes sin to betray itself, and sets upon error the mark of the beast.

Then she lists what happens if error is shirked:

The avoidance of justice and the denial of truth tend to [1]perpetuate sin, [2]invoke crime, [3]jeopardize self-control, and [4]mock divine mercy.

This list makes me think MBE probably observed a lot of children because this is exactly what a child does.

Day 269: Moral Chemicalization

538:23-540:24

I think it is an interesting point that this section becomes a comparison of Cain to Jesus. Mary Baker Eddy doesn’t do it out right, she just ignores Cain, now born, altogether. And only discusses Jesus. That’s really her whole point is to not give the material one second of thought, but only the spiritual.

Point #1

In moral chemicalization, when the symptoms of evil, illusion, are aggravated, we may think in our ignorance that the Lord hath wrought an evil, but we ought to know that God’s law uncovers so-called sin and its effects, only that Truth may annihilate all sense of evil and all power to sin.

This is a good point to remember in Christian Science because while I am in the chemicalization, I may not know what sin is being uncovered. I need to remember I am passing through a chemicalization when the worst of it is upon me and not in an endless mortal situation.

Point #2

The purpose of the Hebrew allegory, representing error as assuming a divine character, is to teach mortals never to believe a lie.

I think, for me, the issue is to remember what the lie is. The little lies are easy to see through. But the one big lie is not.

Day 268: Literal vs. Inspired

536:30-538:22

In this section, Mary Baker Eddy makes several points about this second story that I want to remember.

1. Knowledge of evil was never the essence of divinity or manhood.
2. The purpose of the second story is to depict the falsity of error and the effects of error.
3. Inspired writers interpret the Word spiritually, while the ordinary historian interprets it literally.
4. Literally taken, the story is contradictory in places.
5. Literally taken, God’s love is changeable.
6. Literally taken, Man is not allowed to reform.

Day 267: Sorrow, Desire, & Rule

535:6-536:29

Well, now. Adam and Eve get a talking to – don’t they. The 2nd Story God lays down the punishment.

The woman will multiply her sorrow, her only desire to serve her husband, and he (her husband) shall rule over her. God just made man the god of woman. So now there are many gods.

Mary Baker Eddy’s response is right on:

Divine Science deals its chief blow at the supposed material foundations of life and intelligence.

The material foundation are not only how man is created but how man and woman are to live, which in Science is in harmony, with only one god – God.

Then God turns to man and says he can’t eat of that tree anymore, man can eat herb of the field, bread. Ok. so why isn’t this passage (Genesis 3:17-19) taken literally if so many religions want to take Genesis 3:16 literally? Just bread for man. 

Then Mary Baker Eddy sums up what this 2nd Story God did:

The illusion of sin is without hope or God.

Day 266: Enmity between Man & Woman

533:5-535:5

When I read Genesis 3:15 in this section, I couldn’t believe it. I don’t read the second story much accept as it is used in the weekly bible lesson, so I didn’t remember the actual wording. Wow. Those are some powerful and hateful words to attribute to God. No wonder a God of Love isn’t universally accepted.

To me, this just clarifies that it is an erroneous story and the two stories combine to be the first treatment of man.

Day 265: Death

531:8-533:4

The Adam dream (the second story) has an interesting figurative twist. Adam believed he would die if he ate the apple and so he hadn’t until woman offered it to him. The death wasn’t material but spiritual. So this story has two lies to tell us. First that we are material, and second we will stay that way.

Day 264: Right & Wrong

529:13-531:7

The Adam and Eve story resonated with me, when I was a child, because it was so bucolic and wonderful, it sounded like living in a zoo. Then the story turns and the fun is gone and the kids get punished, and forever after the world will remember these two and how they broke the rules.

Now as an adult, I think what a horrid story to tell a child. And then to tell them it is true and that’s how the world started. What a miserable burden to place on them.

The last sentence in today’s reading says “mind and soul are both right and wrong.” That is how my days have felt, striving to do right but somehow I don’t. When I examine the microsecond where my good motives turned into bad results, I know what happened. I stopped listening and decided for myself what I would do. In that moment, I choose to rather be right and wrong instead of listen to Right.

Sometimes I wish God had a bullhorn.

Day 263: Dust

527:6-529:12

This reading covers a point I’ve been brooding over, namely what is a sentient being. It was an episode of Star Trek, Next Generation that stuck with me. The gist of that show was, did the machine/person known as Data, have rights as any other person. And the test was: is the being sentient? Of course, the television show had very specific legal wording for the test but the idea was compelling.

I’ve wondered what Mrs. Eddy would say along these lines as I read the book but I now see it’s a false argument, right along with the second story. She summarizes it in this reading with this question:

Was it requisite for the formation of man that dust should become sentient…

The idea of sentient being, in Star Trek (and current culture) assumes materiality as a starting point, and classifies it as sentient or not. In Christian Science, it is assumed no materiality as a starting point for all sentient beings (God’s ideas). Notice I said starting point. That’s what I’m beginning to realize is that this book is the mind shift to the beginning.

I’m beginning to see that only radical science moves me beyond the beginning.

Day 262: The Tree of Knowledge

525:7-527:5

This reading pits the Tree of Life (first story) against the Tree of Knowledge (second story). It might be more clear if the tree were called Material Belief or even False Belief. The idea is that the knowledge that the tree has and imparts is not of God but of false belief. A lie.

I last sentence of the reading is:

Man is God’s reflection, needing no cultivation, but ever beautiful and complete.

Cultivation could be interpreted to mean education (academic, such as college). I have someone in my life who never extends beyond the basics of life and looks down on anyone that does – like me. If given an opportunity, I would be a professional student, always in school learning.

So I wonder if Mary Baker Eddy was worried about the influence cultivation (education) would have on a student of Christian Science. When we open ourselves (and our minds) to an education, we are asking to be influenced with knowledge.

In my opinion, while I don’t think an education is requisite for spiritual growth, education is no different than any danger that we must guard against anywhere. We must listen to God for the right ideas and hold to our own highest sense of right and let that sense of right grow.

Day 260: The 2nd Story in Genesis

521:18-523:13

There are 2 stories and they are very different. The first is abstract, vague, and wonderful. The second is specific, concrete, and error. Oddly, the second story is considered the story. I bet it’s the specificity and concreteness that people like, but the story is not happy in the end and people, loads of people, still subject women as an entire gender to crap based on what is written in that second story.

So I’m a first story person, obviously.

But I had a thought. Most of us create something in our lives and we want that creation (children, house, business, etc) to endure beyond us. We aren’t building temporary creations. But the second story is. The earth gets to stick around forever in the story but the people are disposable. I can’t imagine any being of love creating that.