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My book is now published and available on Amazon in Kindle, Kindle Unlimited, and Paperback formats. “Out of darkness, Into the Light.” By Michele Frantz
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The human capacities are enlarged and perfected in proportion as humanity gains the true conception of man and God. (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, Mary Baker Eddy, p. 258:21)
First, I think it is important to understand God and our connection to Him. God is infinite. That means He is everywhere, there is no beginning or end to where He is. Since that pretty much defines infinity then there is nothing outside of Him, since there is no outside of infinity. That means His entire creation, the earth, and all the planets and Stars and that includes us, and everything we see out there is within God as stated in Acts 17:28. We live and move and have our being IN God.
His creation is spiritual, as described in Genesis 1. It’s hard for us mere mortals to grasp what that is. A spiritual body has no physicality that can be damaged in any way. It cannot be involved in any discordant situation. Nothing can attach itself to it or change it in any way. God cares for and maintains His spiritual creation in His likeness, pure, perfect, and unflawed. That’s who we are.
Now, most of you are thinking, well, where does it exist. Look down at what you perceive as your material body and picture it as spiritually perfect, and unflawed in any way. That’s where it exists. God created this universe as an expression of who He is, a place where His ideas can interact with each other harmoniously. But we misunderstand His creation and experience what we believe to be true. The general population believes that matter is all there is. People who believe as I do, believe that the spiritual creation is all there is. They are opposites.
This is where humanity comes in. I’ve talked about points of view before, and I need to bring them up again. There are three points of view. The mortal, the human, and the divine. Our job is to move through these points of view until we see life from only the divine point of view, as God created it in Genesis 1.
Here’s a brief description of the three points so view.
The mortal point of view refers to the physical sense of being. It declares it is all. It is a picture of the material universe. It seems to be here today and gone tomorrow. In the allegory of Adam and Eve, they were exiled to this place because they disobeyed God. Now humanity knows good and evil and spends its time trying to reconnect with its creator. God said to Adam, “But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.” (Genesis 2:17) When Adam and Eve ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil that is when they forgot who they were as God’s spiritual creation and their perception of life became material, with a beginning and end. “thou shalt surely die.” I will get to the human point of view last.
The divine point of view comes from the perspective of God’s spiritual universe, the kingdom of heaven, where “…we live, and move, and have our being; Act 17:28. God’s spiritual creation is and always has been pure and perfect. His universe is the expression of divine Mind when seen spiritually. When seen through the mortal mind we see God’s opposite. The mortal and divine cannot co-exist.
Since God is infinite, and we live in that infinitude, there is no room for the mortal to claim any reality. If you are reading this from a mortal point of view, you are probably holding your head, saying, what on earth is she talking about? I can see, feel, hear, taste, and smell everything here. It is real. Yes, if you hold to the mortal point of view, this experience is as real as you make it.
The human point of view stands between the mortal and divine, which is the place of thought and contemplation, where we learn and grow. That is where we hear “the still small voice,” and God communicates with us. That is where change takes place, and that change in our thought and understanding affects the mortal picture. The human point of view is where we become more spiritual, and we exemplify the divine, to the degree, we express God’s qualities. This is where we work out our salvation. The human body is not physical; it is a mental construct, it is consciousness. It is created from our beliefs and understanding. It’s referred to as our humanity, our character, who we are at any stage of our development. Have you heard this before? “As you believe, so be it.” It’s true.
Our humanity is not dependent on the mortal mind or body, it stands between our material sense of self and our spiritual sense of self, it is a transitional stage of life. Jesus said, “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.” Matt. 5:48. This is where we deal with the absolute [God the unchangeable] and relative. [humanity the changeable] Our human concepts are both mortal and divine. As I said before, this is the place where we learn and grow. This is where divine Mind gives strength to mortal mind, — and lifts “humanity above itself into purer desires, even into spiritual power and good-will to man.” (Science and Health pp. 407:11)
We need to be careful because humanly we are comparative. We consider degrees. In the spiritual, there are no degrees. Our humanity is where we bring our thoughts into conformity with God’s will. This gives us dignity and exposes the thoughts that we need to eliminate as incorrect, allowing us to know God better. That which is good in the human mind comes from the divine Mind, and that which is not good comes from the mortal mind.
Christ Jesus tried to explain this to us with his parable of the tears and the wheat. The Human transitional stage consists of both tears and wheat growing together until the harvest, where Christ comes to the human consciousness and they are separated, and the tears are destroyed, and the wheat is welcomed home and embraced by God.
I was in this state of transition during the years I was learning that I did not need to continue to suffer the adult effects of child abuse. They were not a part of God’s creation. When I finally saw my life from the divine point of view, I realized that abuse had never happened to God’s child, and understood that I am His child, then my life changed. Whatever happened from the mortal point of view, never happened to me, God’s child. It was a mistaken belief about my past, and I could let it go, and then my past was expunged. I’m sure many of you have had a transitional experience, and these will go on through our lives.
Understanding and interpreting my humanity is not easy. It feels like living a dual experience. On one hand, I am walking in a material world, and on the other I am thinking in a spiritual world. How am I to reconcile them. I learned I should not even try to reconcile them, as they are irreconcilable. They are opposites. So how do I deal with this in my daily life, around those who do not know or understand what I am doing?
If I need to cancel plans with a friend, I need to speak in relative (human) terms so my friends will understand me, while I’m thinking from the standpoint of the absolute (God). This keeps me safe as I work through whatever the situation is that caused me to cancel the plans. In certain circumstances, I have learned to walk down two roads at the same time to keep the peace. It doesn’t mean that I am lying. It is the human truth as they know it. But I hold in thought the spiritual truth as I know it.
As I reason through this human experience the truth of life unfolds in my consciousness. Mrs. Eddy writes: “Through right reasoning we emerge from the limited, material, time-bound sense of life into the limitless, spiritual, and eternal.”
When this mortal experience ends, since we are eternal beings that live IN God, we walk on in our spiritual body where our human consciousness continues to grow until we reach a complete understanding of who we are as God’s Idea, as His expression of Love.
Out of Darkness, Into the Light 