Holy ground in a scientific age
Is it possible today to stand on holy ground - to feel the immediacy and concreteness of spiritual things, of divine power? If we think our world is a mechanical construct and that spiritual power operates only in the gaps left in scientific knowledge, then spirituality could certainly seem vague or even nonexistent. But instead of accepting everything the five physical senses tell us - and then sifting through this data for evidence that God still exists - why not question the senses' basic claim to authoritative knowledge?
Certainly, to Christ Jesus, spiritual power was vividly real. He spoke of the qualities of meekness, peacemaking, purity, and brotherhood in the Sermon on the Mount as though these were the native environment in which people could live. In his presence, abundance and liberation appeared where hardship and privation had been entrenched; and healings of sickness and sin flowed naturally from his holy outlook.
Jesus claimed no supernatural power; he said only that he did his Father's work: ''Verily, verily, I say unto you, The Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father do.'' n1
n1 John 5:19.
As he taught, we are in our real being the offspring of God. And because this is the spiritual truth of man, each of us can begin to express spiritual sense, as he did. To this spiritual intuition every act of unselfishness, pure creativity, or humility declares the reality of God, the substantiality of divine Spirit. A materialistic outlook might argue that these are merely attractive attributes in an otherwise dreary, mechanical world. But this would mean honoring moral and spiritual laws in the personal sphere while sadly relinquishing the rest of the universe to the amoral laws of matter. Moral and spiritual qualities have the feel of reality to us because they belong to the fabric of true creation - which is wholly spiritual.
Holding such an outlook does not mean renouncing the scientific spirit but rather looking into it more deeply, exploring the Science of Spirit, as Jesus did. The Master studied scientific order in its most spiritually profound sense by looking past unreliable physical data into the heart of his Father's creation. Knowing God as good and able to pour forth only good, he saw whatever was less than good as fundamentally invalid.
In the chapter ''Science, Theology, Medicine'' in the Christian Science textbook, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, Mary Baker Eddy n2 speaks of the naturalness of good: ''If thought is startled at the strong claim of Science for the supremacy of God, or Truth, and doubts the supremacy of good, ought we not, contrariwise, to be astounded at the vigorous claims of evil and doubt them, and no longer think it natural to love sin and unnatural to forsake it, - no longer imagine evil to be ever-present and good absent?'' n3
n2 The Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science.
n3 Science and Health, p. 130
It is not really natural for us to live as matter-bound creatures longing for holiness in a wilderness of material laws. Through prayer, through communion with God, we increasingly gain the insight that sees good as valid and evil as dubious; we gain the conviction that sees the laws of Spirit as concrete and the laws of matter as flimsy, even powerless.
We can increasingly come into the presence of the holy as our native habitat as the children of God, and feel that everywhere we walk is holy ground. DAILY BIBLE VERSE What man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him? even so the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God. Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God. I Corinthians 2:11, 12.
