The start of a new year is filled with the promise of new beginnings, an opportunity to be and do better. Many people make New Year’s resolutions in January, intending to do just that. Famously, many of those resolutions don’t make it into February.
It’s not just our New Year’s resolutions that lose their luster and fade. Experience shows that things can be new only once. Then weariness replaces enthusiasm, and discouragement replaces hope. We might earnestly wish to live better lives, but perhaps the demands of work and family interfere. Or we might seem to lack the resources or opportunities we need to improve. Or we might feel trapped in old patterns of thinking and acting. But does it have to be that way?
In the Bible we read this promise: “He that sat upon the throne said, Behold, I make all things new” (Revelation 21:5). God’s promise is, “I make all things new,” not “I will make all things new again.” Christian Science teaches that God, divine Love, the only cause and creator, does not have to make things new again. Love’s creation never stops being new, its sinlessness, health, and harmony never decaying. God’s creation reflects Him. God does not decay; therefore, His creation cannot decay.
This Science shows us how to demonstrate this sinlessness, health, and harmony – this ever-newness of God’s creation – in our lives. We do this by putting off a sense of ourselves as material and thinking and living in accordance with what is true of us spiritually.
Just a little every day can work wonders. Can we be a little more loving today than we were yesterday, and more tomorrow than we were today? Have we been accepting a sense of limitation that we can, through our developing sense of Love’s power, begin today to put off? Or maybe even put off altogether?
The Bible’s book of Ephesians says, “Be renewed in the spirit of your mind; and … put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness” (4:23, 24). The Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, Mary Baker Eddy, explains this when she writes, “So far as the scientific statement as to man is understood, it can be proved and will bring to light the true reflection of God – the real man, or the new man (as St. Paul has it)” (“Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures,” p. 300).
This new man, this ever-present identity, is who we really are. This is why, when we resolve to “put on the new man,” the resolution is not mere willpower. It is a resolution to be our true, God-created selves. It’s always natural to be what we actually are. And all the power of God is behind our efforts to be who He created us to be.
But what if we don’t know who we truly are? The Bible relates a useful story. Jesus once asked a town if it would host him and his disciples (see Luke 9:51-56). The town refused. Two of Jesus’ disciples, James and John, asked Jesus if they could call down fire from heaven to destroy the town. Jesus replied, “Ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of. For the Son of man is not come to destroy men’s lives, but to save them.”
James and John were willing to burn down an entire town because they did not understand who they truly were. Jesus, perfectly demonstrating Christ, the true idea of God, corrected their false view of themselves. He reminded them they were not destroyers but healers.
This is exactly what Christ does. It eliminates our false sense of ourselves by revealing what’s true and already here – our genuine selfhood. We often experience that revelation as a feeling of newness or renewal. But it’s really just the forever-reassurance that we belong to God and are good; this has never, ever changed, and never will.
We all have places in our life or aspects of our character crying out for renewal. We can let Christ, through Christian Science, show us our true identity in God’s likeness. Then, thinking and acting in accord with that truth, we experience health and harmony in our lives. More important, our growing understanding of our own real being enables us to see others’ real being as well. This cannot help but turn us into healers as Jesus said his followers would be (see Matthew 10:8 and Mark 16:15, 17, 18), blessing not only us but our communities and the world as well.
God keeps His promises – He has made all things new, forever. Let’s see ourselves as God made us – new, innocent, upright, and free. And then let’s see what good we can accomplish for ourselves and the world by acting on that Christly view!
Adapted from an editorial published in the Jan. 1, 2024, issue of the Christian Science Sentinel.
