Your Questions and Answers
from The Christian Science Journal
If I am who I am, and my spiritual identity has no beginning and no end, where have I been before existence in this day and age?
It certainly appears that life starts with birth and grows through infancy to adulthood before ending in death. And this does beg the questions of what (if anything) happens before birth and after death.
However, Christian Science reveals that this mortal sense of life is actually a misapprehension of existence—what Mary Baker Eddy called “the waking dream” of mortal existence (Science and Health, p. 250).
And the testimony of dreams isn’t a good place to start one’s reasoning. Imagine one night you dreamed that you were in the lower reaches of a coal mine. You might ask, “Where were you before you were down the mine?” Sunning yourself in the fields above? Travelling by train or plane to the mine? But none of these make sense, because all the time you were actually safely at home in bed!
Mortal limitations, including time, are part and parcel of the dream that life is in matter, and they actually have no reality outside the “dream.” Temporal reasoning leads to paradoxes and limitations. Many of today’s cosmologists believe that space and time actually came into existence with the “big bang,” and may end in a “big crunch.”
Hence it is important to recognize that eternal life is not the infinite extension of life to times into the future, nor is preexistence life’s extension to times in the past. Our true existence is now, and always has been, and always will be outside of time. Christian Science equates our immortality and preexistence with our coexistence with God, Spirit (see, for example, Miscellaneous Writings 1886–1893, p. 47).
Hence, as I see it, the really interesting question isn’t “Where have you been?” but “Where are you now?”
Christian Science reveals that real life is really “in and of Spirit” (Mis., p. 24) and that this life is harmonious, perfect, and free from the burdens, difficulties, and limitations of material living.
The more we recognize that we truly dwell in the kingdom of heaven—in the realm of Spirit—right here and right now, and that we always have and always will, the more harmony, dominion, and freedom we’ll experience. And the greater blessing to the world we’ll be.
Daniel R.D. Scott | Scarborough, North Yorkshire, England
Considering your question regarding where you were before this day and age, I presume you are indicating preexistence. In Mrs. Eddy’s writings she explained clearly that in Science, the only actual preexistence is spiritual coexistence with eternal Spirit.
Science and Health says, “Neither will man seem to be corporeal, but he will be an individual consciousness, characterized by the divine Spirit as idea, not matter” (Science and Health, p. 76). In reality, you’ve always been an individual spiritual idea in divine Mind. This is your real identity—your identity is to reflect God’s infinite qualities.
You might ask: “How does that spiritual fact affect my human experience right now?” Science and Health shows that human experience becomes deepened as spiritual qualities are exercised (see Science and Health, p. 99). Also, in Mrs. Eddy’s book The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, she encouraged keeping human consciousness “in constant relation with the divine, the spiritual, and the eternal,” pointing out that the effect of this action “is to individualize infinite power; and this is Christian Science” (The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, p. 160).
The clue at present as to who you appeared to be in the past, appear now to be, and will appear to be, has far more to do with your character than with corporeality. You can’t see character, but you can see evidence of it as spiritual qualities unfold more and more.
Strong character traits expressed in your human experience are lovely indications of your present spiritual relationship with your Father-Mother, God—your closeness to God. They are spiritual qualities, humanly expressed in ways that are admired and cherished. Actually, everyone innately includes all of Spirit’s qualities. Sometimes, many times, we have only to discover that they are ours because as God’s image, we reflect His nature. And that’s true right here, right now. What is more, it always has been true and ever will be.
Spirit loves what it originated—and that includes you.
Beverly DeWindt | Arcadia, California, US
You and I have lived only with God, divine Life and Love, throughout eternity. That’s where we have been and are today. The physical senses will never record this relationship, because they cannot perceive God, who is Spirit. The physical senses speak to us of life as beginning at birth and ending with death, a charade of our eternal life that is in God. That is all these limited senses understand because they rely wholly on fraudulent matter to project reality.
Traditional theologies speak of life after death and call it immortality. But scientific, spiritual theology reveals eternality, a life that is not subject to material experience and influence but is entirely spiritual and eternal. By human reasoning, life that has a beginning must have an ending. But by deeper logic, life that is infinite and eternal has no starting or stopping points.
Christ Jesus told his followers, “I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly” (John 10:10). This life that he spoke of, our spiritual heritage, is ongoing, buoyant, and eternal. God revealed Himself to Moses as the great “I AM,” that rich and abundant Life that can only be defined in the present tense. Jesus, our spiritual mentor, reminded us of this definition when he said, “Before Abraham was, I am” (John 8:58). He was saying we own no past, no future, only the vital and vibrant life that is a radiant now.
The term preexistence refers to our individual life before human birth. To human sense, this may be difficult to understand, but it helps define our eternal existence as not encased in physical form. Without a personal history to weigh us down or a fretful future to contemplate, we live freely, constantly refreshed, learning to heal, to uplift and sustain others, as Jesus did. This day! Now! When our motive in life is to love God supremely and our neighbor as ourselves, then we will really live only to love and give to others in this blessed, eternal now. For that’s all there ever was or ever will be. This moment.