Dealing with the unknown
It seems as though more and more emphasis is being placed on the mysterious, or unknown, from fascination with the occult on the part of some, to a general, more widespread feeling of uncertainty about the future. There is no question that this trend has to be dealt with. But of equal importance is how the task is accomplished.
Couldn't it be that behind preoccupation with the unknown is an underlying misconception of the very nature of God and of man's relationship to Him? A correct perception of His nature, then, would be the key to dealing effectively with the problem.
What can we say of God and His creation? According to the Bible, everything God made is good, and His work is finished. Being complete and the outcome of His perfect nature, it is indestructible, wholly spiritual. God creates and maintains man as His image, as the likeness of Love. Divine Love's universe includes no evil; not a single sinister, destructive element.
Infatuation with the so-called unknown leaves one with a sense of helplessness. The seeming power of the occult would have us fear the future and would deprive us of our natural sense of control and direction. The realization of the spiritual facts of being, of perfect God, perfect man, perfect creation, enables us to destroy these false feelings and realize their total illegitimacy.
No matter what our background or environment, all of us have God-given spiritual sense - the capacity to know, feel, and experience our inseparability from our Maker. We can all know that God is uninfluenceable Mind, that what He knows is divine reality and only what He is conscious of has existence.
Understanding God through spiritual sense, we won't be fascinated by the so-called supernatural; we won't doubt His love and care. And the term ''unknown'' will take on a different, more productive meaning. Mary Baker Eddy, a devoted student of the Bible and the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, defines ''unknown'' this way: ''That which spiritual sense alone comprehends, and which is unknown to the material senses.
''Paganism and agnosticism may define Deity as 'the great unknowable;' but Christian Science brings God much nearer to man, and makes Him better known as the All-in-all, forever near.'' 1
Isn't making God more comprehensible to mankind the very purpose of Christianity as Jesus taught it, and as it was preached and practiced later by the great Apostle Paul? When in Athens, Paul found striking evidence of the influence of paganism and agnosticism. In fact, the Athenians had erected an altar to the ''UNKNOWN GOD.'' Referring to this, the apostle said, ''Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you.'' And he added a little later, ''In him (God) we live, and move, and have our being.'' 2
What could be more intimate or comprehensible? God is never remote or obscure. What God is, what He knows, man expresses. The realization of this absolute truth makes us increasingly aware that God is as near to us as the intelligence we express and the love that we feel as the individualized manifestation of divine Love, the one Mind. ''In him we live, and move, and have our being.''
If something in any field of endeavor seems abstract, obscure, ill-defined, what do we do? We seek factual information from a reliable source and then put that information into practice. Then misconceptions and errors fade.
This approach is equally effective in our efforts at meeting a foreboding sense of the unknown. Turning to the Bible and the fundamental teachings of Christianity, and using our innate spiritual sense, which is always reliable, we can begin to understand something of the nature of God and of man's place in the scheme of things. As we do, we'll be lessening, at least to some degree, ignorance of good, of God's supremacy. We'll be dealing with, and healing, a negative sense of the unknown.
1 Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 596. 2 Acts 17:23, 28.