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Waking Up to Christ -- Finding Man

Christ: "the divine image and likeness"; "the true idea voicing good, the divine message from God to men speaking to the human consciousness" (SH 332:12, 9, emphasis added).

Man: "the divine image and likeness"; "the compound idea of God, including all right ideas" (SH 301:17; 475:14, emphasis added).

Are the Christ and the man of God's creating one and the same? Yes! When you know Christ, you have found God's idea of man. As the divine image and likeness, Christ is the Son of God; God's Son is man - spiritual man. Every ounce of good in us and every ounce of life in us is that spiritual man! As Christ consciousness dawns upon us and destroys the incarnate error of which we are so addicted, all that is left is man - God's manifestation. "Jesus was the highest human concept of the perfect man. He was inseparable from Christ, the Messiah, - the divine idea of God outside the flesh" (SH 482:19). The body and brains of Jesus did not illustrate the divine idea any more than yours or mine do; he called himself the son of man. "Christian Science translates Mind, God, to mortals. It is the infinite calculus defining the line, plane, space, and fourth dimension of Spirit" (Mis 22:10).

Referring to Christ, or perfect man, Paul said, "For in him we live, and move, and have our being" (Acts 17:28). Therefore, we live and move and have being when we understand who we are. We may think that Christ is too remote for recognition, but this is not so. Suppose you and I hatched a plan to steal some candy from a store. Would we not hear conscience tell us no, not from fear of punishment but because it is wrong? That is how Christ speaks to us in the seemingly mundane events of everyday life.

I once went shopping for a used car and found a beautiful red Porsche convertible in a dealer's lot. Immediately, I was aware of two voices in my thought. On the one hand, I loved the car's streamlined style and how it felt when I drove it. On the other, I wanted to know whether it was the best choice for meeting my need. The salesman went to work, giving his best pitch. He was relentless; he wanted to make the sale! After hours passed and it was closing time, we were the only ones left in the showroom. By then, I knew what he thought, but there was an answer that had eluded me. I wanted to hear the still small voice that would give me an answer of peace, so I mentally tuned out the discussion: I closed my eyes and began to listen within. All of a sudden, I heard a loud, compelling voice say, "Pass it up!" I was startled and opened my eyes to see the salesman blush, for the voice was his. He could not believe what he had just said. In disbelief, I blurted out, "What did you say?" He repeated, "Pass it up." He then told me to call him in a week to see if he had something else. When I made the call, he confided in me that the car had a defect in the engine, which would be very costly to repair, and that, for some reason, he just could not sell it to me. Christ, Truth, had touched him, and the honest man of God's creating was beginning to shine through the veil of selfish ambition.

Discernment of Christ's presence proves man's perfectibility. Perfect man is not far off or unknowable. "In him we live, and move, and have our being" (Acts 17:28). Matter cannot live, but conscience proves that we are alive and real. The distinct difference between conscience and mortal mind's consciousness of good and evil is that conscience is always direct, simple, and right. It is never wrong, opinionated, or optional. We may choose not to listen nor act according to conscience, but when we disobey this inclination, we always pay the consequences of guilt and loss. Christ patiently knocks at our mental door, providing opportunity for us to try again until the decision is made to stop sinning: "I will not leave you comfortless: I will come to you" (John 14:18). "Be zealous therefore, and repent" (Rev 3:19). If we do not remove our own veils, we will be alone, bound by the dreamy sense of good and evil. This feeble sense of life exists for as long as we believe it, and nothing can alter this self-conviction except Christ, Truth. The separation of good from evil is never pleasant, but the rewards are infinite. Spiritual freedom, peace, and harmony are all at hand. Once the pathway to righteousness is pointed out, there is no turning back to ignorance. Shirking our responsibility to cherish our fellow man is particularly painful. Jesus said, "That servant, which knew his lord's will, and prepared not himself, neither did according to his will, shall be beaten with many stripes" (Luke 12:47).

Conscience is Christ at work, educating mortal man out of his poor choices of ignorance and duplicity. The effects of conscience are integrity, harmony, moral courage, strong and dedicated fathering, instinctive mothering, insightful leadership, and so on.

Intuition is the activity of Christ foreseen. All prophecy is intuitive. Moses foresaw the perils to freedom when leading the children of Israel out of Egypt, but this did not deter his fearless compliance to Christ: his intuition led him straight to the shore of the Red Sea and then on dry ground to the safety of the other side. Human logic would say that these directions were insane, but Mind knows beyond mortal man's suspicions. Intuition is a selfless state of listening, waiting, watching, and doing. It leads us beside the still waters and guides us through the valley of the shadow of death without harm or fear.

Jesus prophesied to all men, "If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come and follow me" (Matt 19:21). To sell what we have means to dispense with that which binds us to mortal beliefs - to whatever has made us blind, deaf, and dumb to truth. We do not give the proceeds of this sale to others to burden them with things of no value. We "give to the poor" of our moral substance after we have earned our freedom from sin and hypocrisy. Christ, the image of God, opens our neighbors' eyes to their own divine likeness and to the necessity to go and sell what poor baggage they have. "Treasure in heaven" is pure, radiant consciousness and the companioning friendship won by sharing the pearl of great price. "Come and follow me" is Mind's expression, where image and likeness is unbounded.

"Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God. . . . Beloved, now are we the sons of God" (I John 3:1?2). Christian Science reveals to us what we shall be and what we are now; "When that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away" (I Cor 13:10).

George Denninger ©

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