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How to see yourself

A Christian Science perspective: A spiritual view brings physical health.

I was headed to the optometrist to see if the lenses for my glasses needed adjustment. I felt nervous because I was seeing a new doctor and was worried that he might find something wrong with my eyes. At the time, I had started working full time as an editor, which involved constantly staring at a computer screen for hours at a time on a daily basis.

When I entered the doctor’s office, my fear was compounded by a poster on the wall depicting a large eyeball plagued with a plethora of ailments. Underneath this alarming image was this slogan: “See your eyes the way your doctor sees them.”

It occurred to me that this poster was, in effect, advertising disease – something I didn’t want any part of. So I put a stop to the advertisement in my thought. I turned away from the poster and its graphic images to see myself in a different way – the way God saw me. In my study of Christian Science, which I had relied on in the past for healing, I had learned that seeing man as the image and likeness of God could actually promote health.

According to the Bible, God is good, and God is Spirit (see III John 1:11 and John 4:24, respectively). This means God’s image and likeness is good, and is spiritual. I understood that God, Spirit, could never be limited or fail, because the nature of Spirit is infinite and everlasting; and if I reflected Spirit, I couldn’t be limited either. I couldn’t have failing sight in any degree.

The Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, Mary Baker Eddy, put it this way: “Spirit is God, and man is His image and likeness. Therefore man is not material; he is spiritual” (“Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures,” p. 468).

If I had done what the poster said, I would have actually seen myself in a very limited, material way. A deteriorating body did not fall in line with God’s view of eternal being. A spiritual view of myself would show me as unlimited and unfailing. I realized that as the reflection of God, all I could reflect was spiritual goodness. During the appointment, I clung to the idea of seeing myself as God saw me.

After the doctor ran through all the standard procedures, the results were in. He said, “I don’t ever see this, especially with someone in your line of work, but your eyesight has actually improved!” Seeing myself spiritually – as God sees me – not only removed my fears, but improved my vision.

To this day, I am so grateful for the way I saw myself at that appointment. This experience has given me so much hope in what a spiritual view can bring to daily life.

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Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

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