Be who you are

In an education workshop I attended, the trainer asked each of us, “Who are you?” I wrote down “a teacher.” He asked again, and I wrote “a mother.” When he asked the tenth time, out popped “a child of God.” My co-teacher, who was also at the workshop, said, “Wow. That’s a cool answer.”

It wasn’t until many years later that I began to really dive into what it means to be a child of God. I was invited to attend a Sunday church service at a Church of Christ, Scientist, where a member gave me a copy of the textbook of Christian Science, “Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures” by Mary Baker Eddy, to take home.

As I read, I soon discovered that the answer to “Who are you?” had a more spiritual meaning than I’d ever really considered. The Scriptures state, “And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness” (Genesis 1:26). Christian Science expands on the concept of “man” as referring not to mortals, but to everyone’s real, spiritual nature as the immortal, spiritual expression of God, divine Spirit.

Science and Health describes the implications of this concept of man. For instance, “Because man is the reflection of his Maker, he is not subject to birth, growth, maturity, decay. These mortal dreams are of human origin, not divine” (p. 305).

As my co-teacher had said all those years ago, “Wow!” This brings a whole new meaning to the question “Who are you?” and the answer “a child of God.” It means that we are spiritual and at one with God, and that God’s spiritual qualities are inherent in our being. Characteristics such as obedience, kindness, joy, and wholeness are built into us.

And this means we can’t truly be anything other than what God made us. Any opposite claim is a “mortal dream,” not the spiritual fact of existence. Genesis states, “God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good” (1:31). This means that as God’s children, we can only express this good.

This can seem like a stretch – especially when what we’re seeing or experiencing isn’t very good at all. But Christ Jesus lived and proved this spiritual truth, and showed how learning to see ourselves (and others) as created by God to express only good can have a tremendous impact on our thoughts and life, including physical healing.

One day, while walking along a mountain trail, I came across a nest of bees on the ground. Though I carefully stepped around it, one flew up and stung the back of my hand. The pain was intense, and my hand immediately swelled to twice its size.

I knew I needed to get away from “hurt hand” thinking and instead consider the truth of myself as the child of God, protected and cared for. I began to sing Hymn 304 from the “Christian Science Hymnal.” The words are from a poem by Mrs. Eddy. The phrase “I will listen for Thy voice, / Lest my footsteps stray” was, to me, a promise that if I listened only to what God was telling me about His creation – the good about me and the bee – and did not stray into believing a bad situation, then understanding this spiritual truth would reverse the false, mortal story.

And it did. I continued singing and praying, and by the end of the hour, my hand was its normal size. I realized that I had always been whole and complete, never touched by the “mortal dream” of injury. And this realization brought about healing.

Through study and prayer, we can all get to know more of who we already are – children of God, our Father-Mother, the source of all good that we reflect. Through this lens, the question “Who are you?” points us to our true identity as spiritual, whole, and willing to listen for and obey God’s inspiration and guidance.

We are what we have always been: children of God. It’s the truest answer there is.