Exploring the infinite
A Christian Science perspective: A view of the infinite universe brings healing.
Space exploration and the vast view of the universe it offers can only begin to hint at the nature of infinity. The limited space we think we live in is actually one so immense that it will continue to offer us new discoveries for ages to come. Our fascination with space exploration may serve as a metaphor for exploring the limitless, spiritual, and infinite nature of God’s creation. Why is that? To be infinite and have eternal characteristics, the universe must have a substance that lasts – and what substance lasts for eternity? Is it not Spirit? And is not Spirit’s universe spiritual? Exploring the universe of Spirit helps us discover that man and the universe are more than what we detect with the physical senses.
Would you like to be an explorer? While most of us aren’t heading out to discover new lands or planets, the daily exploration of new, spiritual ideas, or truths about the infinite God, allows us to discover fresh insights – insights that enable us to drop long-held misconceptions, and exchange them for more expansive views. When we do this, we become explorers and discoverers of the infinite.
In the 1870s, when Arctic explorers sought to reach the top of the Earth – the North Pole – a woman named Mary Baker Eddy was exploring the universe of infinite Spirit, God. A few years before, a severe fall on the ice left her in a critical condition. She read an account of one of Jesus’ healings in the Bible and was healed. The experience prompted her to set out to discover the laws of God – which could be made practical and be demonstrated consistently – to bring healing to humanity today. She turned to God to guide her into this new territory, and exercised the qualities needed for spiritual exploration – love for God and man, courage, humble receptivity to God’s leading, and unswerving trust in the mission she was given to fulfill.
Her findings, which she would publish in 1875 in her book “Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures,” are a guide for any spiritual explorer today. In that book, she explains: God, Spirit, is all-encompassing good; man is Spirit’s perfect likeness; God and His loved creation are inseparable; and because God is infinite good, He can have no opposite. Proving these spiritual facts doesn’t just reveal more of the vastness and glory of God and His spiritual creation. The application of Mrs. Eddy’s discovery – the very laws of God – can heal now, just as it did in Jesus’ time.
At the heart of her discovery, which she named “Christian Science,” is the fact that, “everything in God’s universe expresses Him” (Science and Health, p. 331). Understanding this simple but profound truth brings healing. For example, knowing that man expresses God, who is infinite Love, leads us to the spiritual conclusion that hatred is not part of our real God-given nature. This understanding, gained through ongoing prayer, brings healing, eradicating the causes for wars, conflicts, or even minor disagreements. Mrs. Eddy states it this way: “One infinite God, good, unifies men and nations; constitutes the brotherhood of man; ends wars; fulfils the Scripture, ‘Love thy neighbor as thyself;’ annihilates pagan and Christian idolatry, – whatever is wrong in social, civil, criminal, political, and religious codes; equalizes the sexes; annuls the curse on man, and leaves nothing that can sin, suffer, be punished or destroyed” (Science and Health, p. 340).
In the same way, understanding and affirming the fact that man expresses one infinite Life, God, negates the possibility that anything contrary to Life could ever exist in His universe. Health, and wholeness, is then recognized as the natural state of man as God’s expression – and healing occurs as we see this full picture. Exploring the blessings of an infinite God, who is all good, is powerful prayer. It brings health to individuals and healing to the world because God, Truth, is behind it.
Mankind is drawn to explore and discover the infinite because we, as God’s children, are drawn to our origin. He is causing us to know Him and the limitless good He has created. God told the prophet Jeremiah, “They shall all know me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them” (Jeremiah 31:34). We can know what has seemed unknowable, and exchange a limited, matter-based view for a boundless, spiritual one. God enables us all to be explorers and discoverers of the spiritual universe, to know our place in it, and our unimpeachable spiritual nature. And this exploration is one that brings healing.