At a conference The New Yorker magazine is sponsoring in May, participants will hear from the founders of a company dedicated to helping people understand their own genetic information. No doubt the aim is to help people understand themselves, or at least their makeup, better. The focus will probably be on how our genes make us what we are and also on how they play a significant role in what happens to us—to our health, our behavior, our prospects.
But there's a different way to find out about ourselves and about our health, behavior, and prospects. And it has nothing to do with DNA. It looks in an entirely different direction. As the Bible puts it, "Cease ye from man, whose breath is in his nostrils: for wherein is he to be accounted of?" (Isa. 2:22).
Where are we supposed to look to find out about ourselves if we don't look at our genes, our biology and chemistry? We can turn to the Bible for that answer too: "Mark the perfect man, and behold the upright: for the end of that man is peace" (Ps. 37:37). If you're looking for perfection, you don't want to look at matter and mortality. Instead, you want to look at Spirit, God, and spirituality. That's where we find the perfect man, created in God's own image and likeness (see Gen. 1:26, 27). That's what each one of us actually is right now. And that verse from Psalms shows what we can expect when we understand our spiritual heritage and makeup: peace—peace in our health and in every aspect of life.
This way of seeing ourselves and others is the basis of the religion and way of life that Christ Jesus established and demonstrated. Instead of paying attention to matter and its conditions, he paid attention to God, the Father of us all, and to the spiritual nature we all have as God's expression. This enabled him to cure illnesses, reform behavior, and solve all sorts of problems. As Mary Baker Eddy explains in the Christian Science textbook, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures (pp. 476–477), "Jesus beheld in Science the perfect man, who appeared to him where sinning mortal man appears to mortals. In this perfect man the Saviour saw God's own likeness, and this correct view of man healed the sick. Thus Jesus taught that the kingdom of God is intact, universal, and that man is pure and holy. Man is not a material habitation for Soul; he is himself spiritual."
Each one of us is spiritual, not material. This is what Jesus taught and proved. We don't delve into matter to find out about this; we delve into God. To understand ourselves, we have to understand God, since we're actually His expression, nothing else. It doesn't look that way if we focus on "man, whose breath is in his nostrils"—if we focus on genes and other material elements. But we can instead focus on "the perfect man," "God's own likeness." This has results, as Jesus repeatedly proved and as people are proving today as well.
Looking to find out more about this? You can study on the Bible and Science and Health on your own and find out about the divine Science that operates everywhere. Or, rather than spend a couple days at the New Yorker conference, you can contact an authorized teacher of Christian Science and spend a couple weeks in a class that focuses on Christian Science—on God and His laws and on man (each one of us, male or female) as His expression who can express only good. That two-week class costs a lot less than the New Yorker conference too—$100 vs. $2000. And it will continue to pay huge dividends in the years ahead.
Want to understand your makeup? Forget genetics. Remember your spiritual heritage and dive into it. It can make a huge difference in your life—and in other people's lives too.
Link
The New Yorker — The New Yorker Conference: Stories from the Near Future
