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[Accept and defend perfect man as the only man!]
Metaphysical Application Ideas for the Christian Science Bible Lesson on

“Man”
for Sunday, September 4, 2016

by Kerry Jenkins, CS, House Springs, MO
(314) 406-0041 kerry.helen.jenkins@gmail.com

This week's Golden Text is from the definitive statement of creation in Genesis 1. It is succinct. Why would you need more when this creation is complete, perfect (another word in the Bible for complete)? It's interesting to consider this fact when you look at the far lengthier, complex, and frankly depressing account of creation that follows. Matter likes to inflate its own importance by claiming that man is a complex creature, made of so many material factors, biological, emotional, and environmental. Our freedom to experience our God-given peace, wisdom, health, immortality, comes from "act[ing] boldly against the accredited evidence of the senses…" (S24). Let's do that this week; be bold and refute the falsehood of material sense. Embrace our perfection, demonstrate it, rejoice in it, and praise our Father-Mother for the gift of a just, righteous, beautiful creation, man that was given dominion.

The Responsive Reading (RR) really sets a tone for the issues of [dominion, satisfaction,] justice, righteousness and equality that run throughout this week's lesson. [See CC PS1 & 2 on RR.] I love the way Justice and righteousness (judgment) are the very foundation (habitation) of God's throne or power/government. What a foundation! And this sense of justice and righteousness is pervasive in man's spiritual existence. Christian Science upholds man's freedom from sickness, sin, death, inequality and injustice of every kind on the basis of man's spiritual origin. When we start with this divine origin of dominion, we keep things clear, satisfying, health-giving, joy-providing—complete.

Section 1: Can reflection be anything less than its original?

As soon as we accept that we are separate mortal beings, derived from mortal parentage, having our own minds, we are no longer reflections, but "originators". This is pretty much the commonly accepted understanding of man today. I came across an arresting statement recently in Retrospection and Introspection, p.56: "The sun sends forth light, but not suns;" The obvious implication here is that God made man as an expression of His being, not as separate little beings on their own trajectories. The key here seems to be that we must be conscious of our spiritual identity, so conscious that we reject every single quality that is "underived from Deity". (S4) We cannot afford either to take pride in a personal sense of goodness or accomplishment, or to feel disappointment or shame at our shortcomings. Rather we can rejoice that we are complete as reflections, never, ever separate from our source, God.

Section 2: Going to God, we find equality expressed.

I love this story of the daughters of Zelophehad. I noticed in this reading that it states that "Moses brought their cause before the Lord". What a powerful thing to do! How often do we try to hash out injustices in the court of human opinion? (Mrs. Eddy states on p.192 of Science & Health: "Human opinions are not spiritual.") And look what God says, all those years ago, long before "women's rights", or any kind of feminist movement. God told Moses to give them the land. We too can go straight to God to be informed as to our rights and privileges. We don't need to wait for laws to change, governments to pass—no more than the Children of Israel had to wait for the Promised Land! (They didn't have to wait; they were simply afraid to take possession of it when it was first offered.) Our freedom from injustice, inequality of every kind, is supplied by our loving Father-Mother who has given each of us a full and divine inheritance. We can boldly claim and consciously accept our equality, our worth, as God-given.

Section 3: The marriage of masculine and feminine qualities makes us perfect/complete.

Instead of thinking that we have to put this section in the context of literal marriage, let's think in terms of the "union" of qualities that are mentioned in citation S13 and throughout this section. None of us are left out of this challenge to accept our completeness, or wholeness. The example from Proverbs of the "virtuous woman" is a woman who expresses "…not a single quality underived from Deity…" (S4) Many of the qualities she expresses in this passage could be ascribed to a good man as well. Her strength, endurance, wisdom, diligence and so on are divinely-derived and thus available to all. "Love is impartial and universal in its adaptations and bestowals." (S9) This keeps us from accepting the suggestion that we just aren't good at certain things, or are dependent on others for some things that we don't have the ability to do or understand. It does not mean that we have to do everything ourselves, just that whatever we need to accomplish is within our grasp as reflections of God.

Section 4: Find and recognize beauty without matter.

The "Bible Lens" from the August 29-September 4 Christian Science Sentinel explains that beauty in citation B16 comes not from the idea of "physical loveliness", but rather the Hebrew word "noam" which implies kindness, pleasantness and grace. Mrs. Eddy tells us that "Comeliness and grace are independent of matter." (S20). So how do we recognize this kind of beauty? We see it in the demonstration of those qualities that are God-derived. We see it in Love expressed in kindness and compassion, patience, and tenderness. Mind expressed in intelligence and discernment. Soul expressed in creativity, and so on. The really awesome thing about these real forms of beauty, is that every last one of them is immortal, eternal, ageless. So is man when we make sure to measure them only in that way!

Section 5: Action needed on our part to stand guard over that perfect man. [See CC PS (B19)]

It's not that we have to somehow "maintain" that perfect man that is God's reflection. But we do need to keep watch in our consciousness that we aren't accepting the barrage of suggestions about man that would have us acquiesce to the material model. Again, the Bible Lens in this week's Sentinel was really helpful to me in providing the Hebrew words in citation B17 for "mark" and "end". When we "mark" the perfect man we are guarding, protecting or watching. And, when we look to the "end" of that man, we are not talking about his death, but rather the future or posterity of that man. When we stand guard over our consciousness, maintaining the true concept of man as spiritual and whole, we find our future or immortality to be one of peace! In the story of the woman that was bent over for 18 years [in citation B19 & its PS3], we have Jesus unveiling her "rights" as a "daughter of Abraham" (God's child), to freedom. These rights are above all humanly established creeds or laws, and we can act boldly to defend ourselves and others from such tyranny. Our God bestowed rights trump civil laws and so-called health laws, anytime!

Section 6: Man and woman as reflection are unlimited and blest.

Once again we are being asked to give up our sense of identity that is rooted in material origin [for our true origin of divine dominion. By crying out and singing out for this dominion, we've made a healing appointment with the Great Physician! Speaking and acting with expectancy will even raise the dead as shown in citations B21 and B23 and in the PS4 and PS5 insights by Cobbey Crisler. What fullness of joy comes from] our unchanging "Father of Lights" and our reflection of "the central light,… the invisible God." (S27). There are no separate "little lights" out there, small "suns" acting on their own, with limited resources and a material end. We are not "suns" but eternally reflected light from the one "light" that is God. In this truth we find our unqualified dominion, safety, immortality, health, wholeness, perfection.


[Warren’s PS1 from Cobbey Crisler’s insights on RR, Psalms 8:
“Psalms 8, Verse 4. What is the presumption behind biblical therapy? What is its premise? We know it would be based on the question in verse 4 in part, “”What is man?” That has been the most elusive answer to any question for the human race, except, perhaps, what is God? Who am I? The great unanswered question. Or does the Bible provide answers that fill that gap in thought, that vacuity? The answer given here biblically is “Thou madest him to have dominion.”
You need to have a premise on which to base the whole idea or concept of biblical healing or therapy. It’s based on the fact that man has dominion. Of course, that immediately recalls to us God’s pronouncement of that effect in Genesis 1 [Verse 26]. If dominion is part of the nature of man, what does that say about man’s ability to get rid of disease? We can’t have dominion and be dominated simultaneously. The logic of that premise requires us to search out more deeply ehat the Bible is telling us about man’s nature as it relates to God because it’s on that basis that we are having these prescriptions filled…
If it’s God’s theology, according to the Bible, it works. God’s theology in the Bible can never be confined to theory. When God spake, what happened? It was done. That’s how quickly His medicine works…
“In biblical terms, [Psalms 8:6] , “Thou makest him to have dominion.” What is there about this fact that we can apply? Are the Psalms, in part, the threshold of our discovery of this throughout the entire Bible?”

Excerpted in part from a transcript of a talk by B. Cobbey Crisler entitled “Leaves of the Tree: Prescriptions from PsalmsYou can buy your own transcripts of most of Cobbey’s talks at this website, https://bcobbeycrisler.com/collected-works-of-b-cobbey-crisler/ It’s maintained by his widow, Janet Crisler, who can be reached by email at janetcrisler7@gmail.com You can get audio CDs from The Daycroft School Foundation by calling 203-321-2119 or emailing info@daycroftschool.org ]


[W’s PS2 from Cobbey Crisler’s insights on RR, Psalms 17:15: Find satisfaction and health only in the original!
“Verse 15 of Psalms 17 [tells us] that God’s prescriptions, precisely filled, bring satisfaction. Satisfaction because “we awake in God’s likeness.” But that results first from the prerequisite of “beholding God’s face in righteousness.” That requires us to go back to the theology of Genesis 1 [GT and B1] to comprehend what that means. If we indeed are image, or likeness, and God is the original, the only way we can find out about our nature is to spend our time studying the original. Then we know the image. We also know what’s not the image by studying the original.

Just as Treasury Department experts know counterfeit bills, not because they have studied all the many thousands of counterfeit attempts, from poor work to expert work, but rather, simply study the original and you will know the counterfeit immediately. That’s in a sense akin to surgically removing in a mental way, or taking the purgative cathartic Word of God to remove what does not belong to our nature. Imagine the joy of letting go what has burdened us for so long. It’s part of that darkness that is ignorance, that the light, the laser beam of revealed truth, simply removes, and not painfully at all. It just does what light is supposed to do. It removes any rationale for the existence of darkness.”

Excerpted in part from a transcript of a talk by B. Cobbey Crisler entitled “Leaves of the Tree: Prescriptions from PsalmsYou can buy your own transcripts of most of Cobbey’s talks at this website, https://bcobbeycrisler.com/collected-works-of-b-cobbey-crisler/ It’s maintained by his widow, Janet Crisler, who can be reached by email at janetcrisler7@gmail.com You can get audio CDs from The Daycroft School Foundation by calling 203-321-2119 or emailing info@daycroftschool.org ]


[W’s PS3 from Cobbey Crisler’s insights on citation B19, Luke 13.11-16: Jesus healing a bent-over woman: “Verses 10 through 17 are a healing found only in Luke.
(Verse 11) A woman with a spinal difficulty is in a synagogue Notice that Luke doesn’t say she has an infirmity. Luke, who is reputed to be a physician, doesn’t even diagnose it as an infirmity, but as a “spirit of an infirmity,” a concept, a spirit, a thought. “She was bowed together. She couldn’t lift up herself.”

Verse 12. Jesus comes and announces to womanhood something that could be applicable in many ways, not just this one time. “Woman, you are free from your infirmity. Verse 13. “She’s made straight and glorifies God.”

Verse 14. Incredible, “the ruler of the synagogue” in which this grand healing and correction of a human problem occurred “answered with indignation”.

Jesus’ explanation about the cause of disease is in Verse 16. No longer should there be any room in Christian thought that disease stems from thought or is God’s will when Jesus attributes it to anything that would oppose God. Only what would oppose God would impose something on man that God Himself never created in His whole man. Is that a new theology? Satan and disease linked, and not God as the cause of loss, or pain, or sickness?

Because if it is, he defines Satan as a liar as Jesus does in John (8:44). Satan has bound this woman with an infirmity that has her bent over, and has accomplished this for eighteen years. (Luke 13:16) And “Satan is a liar and the father of it.” Satan’s work must be lies as well. If they are they can be corrected mentally, by a full recognition of what is true. Notice that Satan does the binding. Jesus said (John 8:32) “Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”

It’s a contest between the truth and the lie about God and His theology, about man, about woman, about children and about disease. If Satan is a liar, he will never change his character. Our idea of God may have gone haywire, but God has not moved.”

Excerpted in part from a transcript of a talk by B. Cobbey Crisler entitled “Book of Luke: Luke the ResearcherYou can buy your own transcripts of most of Cobbey’s talks at this website, https://bcobbeycrisler.com/collected-works-of-b-cobbey-crisler/ It’s maintained by his widow, Janet Crisler, who can be reached by email at janetcrisler7@gmail.com You can get audio CDs from The Daycroft School Foundation by calling 203-321-2119 or emailing info@daycroftschool.org ]


[W’s PS4 from Cobbey Crisler’s insights on citation B21, Psalms 30: 2-5::
“Psalm 30:2 Again, the appointment with the physician, the Great Physician, in the Bible is very often this, “O Lord my God, I cried unto thee.” It does not take our being attuned to God to make the appointment. Just as the prodigal son suddenly decided that his really right place was not in that pig pen when he came to himself [Luke 15: 16-18]. There’s a whole new view of one’s identity. He decided that his father’s house held much more. Then you notice the father did not go to the man with the swine to save the son. The son had to do something. Then the father ran to meet him as he was coming [Luke 15:20]. With your back to the Father, you’re not even heading in that direction. With your face toward the Father you’re looking at the Father’s face, which is part of the cure biblically, [that] is to see the divine nature. Then of course, you want to be nearer the source of your nature. Step by step the light grows brighter around your feet. We know where we’re heading. We may not have arrived yet, but it’s getting brighter, and lighter, and our problems are dropping away, our burdens, and the divine nature is becoming applicable nearer and nearer. “O Lord my God, I cried unto thee; you have healed me.”
“One of our modern hymns [#425] has been made out of verse 5, “weeping may endure for a night, but joy [cometh] in the morning.” That word “joy” in the Hebrew is “singing.” Take weeping as the symptom and notice singing is the remedy. Sing, do we do much singing? It doesn’t have to be even with an audible or perceptible sound. It’s in our hearts, the song…. All the things that Jesus mentioned. They have to make room for the joy. It’s fullness of joy. It’s God’s dosage. Everything else has to be eliminated, removed, uncontained. That’s quite a prescription for depression, adversity. It seems difficult to sing in a trial, in a crisis. The Bible is just saying, try it, you might like it. [Laughter] Because it might solve [any and all issues].

Excerpted in part from a transcript of a talk by B. Cobbey Crisler entitled “Leaves of the Tree: Prescriptions from PsalmsYou can buy your own transcripts of most of Cobbey’s talks at this website, https://bcobbeycrisler.com/collected-works-of-b-cobbey-crisler/ It’s maintained by his widow, Janet Crisler, who can be reached by email at janetcrisler7@gmail.com You can get audio CDs from The Daycroft School Foundation by calling 203-321-2119 or emailing info@daycroftschool.org ]


[W’s PS5 from Cobbey Crisler’s insights on citation B23, Luke 7.11-16: Jesus raises a widow’s dead son at Nain:
“Now Luke Chapter 7. Let’s focus in upon some of the material that is particular to Luke, that only Luke’s gospel gives us. For instance, in Verse 11. Were it not for Luke, we would not have had preserved for us one of the three recorded times that Jesus raised someone from the dead (Luke 7. 11-17). There is a significant fact about the accounts of raising the dead in the Bible. They are not all in the New Testament. The significant is that not all healings made a significant impact at the time to have impressed upon human memory the location where it occurred. This is why you will find statements mentioning when Jesus went to a particular village.
“However, in every case the raising of the dead, from the Old Testament all the way through the New Testament, the human mind was startled by seeing what it accepted as impossible, occur.

“This is what is in common about Zaraphath, Shunam, Nain, Capernaum, Bethany, Jerusalem, Lydda, and Troas. They didn’t forget where it happened. The details of the healing are particularly sharp.
“In this case we have a city called Nain, probably a village as it is today. There is still an ancient cemetery outside the gate. There was a lonely widow at the head of this procession. Jesus, detecting thought again, saw her entire situation at one glance. He came to her and said, “Weep not” (Verse 13). He dealt with the heavy weight of grief on thought, touched the coffin (Verse 14), strictly forbidden under Jewish law, and then said, “Young man.”
“Notice the radical nature of that. The only man supposedly there who could not hear was the one Jesus addressed. He must have expected that man’s faculty of hearing to be normal. “Young man, I say unto thee, Arise.” He doesn’t help him either.
“Dominion over death is part of that unqualified dominion God gave man. As a matter of fact, dominion, as a word, as a concept, simply can’t be qualified. If it is, you no longer have dominion. (Verse 15) “He that was dead sat up, and began to speak. He delivered him to his mother.” …

Excerpted in part from a transcript of a talk by B. Cobbey Crisler entitled “Book of Luke: Luke the ResearcherYou can buy your own transcripts of most of Cobbey’s talks at this website, https://bcobbeycrisler.com/collected-works-of-b-cobbey-crisler/ It’s maintained by his widow, Janet Crisler, who can be reached by email at janetcrisler7@gmail.com You can get audio CDs from The Daycroft School Foundation by calling 203-321-2119 or emailing info@daycroftschool.org ]


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