“Are you an introvert or an extrovert?” a friend once asked me. I instinctively rebelled at being pigeonholed – especially since the extreme of these attitudes can take the form of either an avoidance of social contacts or a kind of greedy gregariousness. I told him that I treasured the ability to enjoy my own company as well as a desire to be a good friend.
My rejection of labels and their extremes also applies to political alignments. For what mental quality remains to forward our own and the world’s progress when two people stand in opposite corners and neither budges – when neither listens to or honors the other’s reasoning and desires?
In the Preface of her transformative book “Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures,” Mary Baker Eddy writes, “The time for thinkers has come” (p. vii). I trust I will always want to have the independence of mind that turns to God for answers to every decision, from the least to the most important.
Let’s say we’re confronted with the suggestion that we have to choose between being strongly in favor of supporting an individual sinner in his journey toward reform or correcting a perceived loosening of morals in society by making it clear that sin doesn’t pay. Why should these good inclinations be at loggerheads? Jesus, the greatest exemplar of the wisdom of divine Mind, God, showed us the compassionate and disciplined way to help one another while also adhering to a moral code.
For instance, he kept a crowd from stoning a woman for promiscuous behavior. He did not condemn the woman, and it’s likely that his compassion and his understanding of her true nature as God’s child would help her have a moral uprising and gain a purer, more spiritual view of herself. But he also wisely counseled her to “go, and sin no more” (John 8:11).
The Bible alerts us to some synonyms for God, such as Truth, Life, Spirit, and Love. All of the attributes associated with these words are sourced in God and therefore necessarily expressed by all of us as God’s children. Qualities of Love would include genuine affection and forgiveness; of Truth, sound morals and disciplined behavior; and so on.
These qualities are not in conflict with one another and carry no divisive agenda. They are neither self-deprecating nor self-aggrandizing. They exist to bless, not inhibit or condemn, God’s creation, His offspring. They exude health and happiness and bring cooperation, not conflict, to our interactions with others.
Here are some common labels that we definitely wouldn’t benefit from sticking on ourselves: “I feel sick,” “I can’t help sinning,” or even “I must be dying.” Nor does it benefit us or others to stick them on anyone else. Not one of these assessments is true of any of us, because they are matter-based – not grounded in Spirit, God, who is absolute good.
The only label God, Spirit, attaches to His offspring in the first chapter of Genesis in the Bible is “very good” (verse 31). The true, God-created nature of each of us is spiritual, and God has given us the courage and wisdom that enable us to bring healing to whatever situation needs resolution.
If we’re tempted at times to insist that someone accept our point of view as the only valid one, we can instead pray for ourselves, as the psalmist did: “Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me” (Psalms 51:10). Thankfully, each one of us has the God-given authority to know ourselves and others as the very good child of God.
I have enjoyed hours of conversation with people holding opposite views from mine. In each individual, I have loved their expression of Godlike qualities. Since God is All, and each of us has all that God gives, we already do, in a real and demonstrable sense, “have it all.”
In one of his letters to early Christians, the Apostle Paul states plainly, and radically, that he attached no labels to God’s children – labels such as Jew or Greek, enslaved or free, male or female, “for ye are all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28). So why not relish the good in everyone we meet and in all of our relationships, singing to high heaven what these words from a hymn in the “Christian Science Hymnal” affirm that each of us truly is:
Man is the noblest work of God,
His beauty, power and grace,
Immortal; perfect as his Mind
Reflected face to face.
(Mary Alice Dayton, No. 51)
Adapted from an article published in the Nov. 3, 2025, issue of the Christian Science Sentinel.
