No unknowns to God

At the beginning of the year the future can look bright, but it can also feel scary. There are so many unknowns.

The ancient Greeks had a way of dealing with that – they hoped to keep bad things from happening by placating every single one of the many gods they believed ruled human life. Each god got his or her own temple – and in case they accidentally missed one, they built an extra temple to “the unknown god.” When the Apostle Paul saw this temple, he decided to help them out. He announced: “Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you” (Acts 17:23).

The God Paul described to the people of Athens was neither one of many nor unknowable. Paul explained what the Bible teaches: There is only one God, and He is the only cause and creator.

In “Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures,” Mary Baker Eddy defines “unknown” in part as “that which spiritual sense alone comprehends, and which is unknown to the material senses” (p. 596). Material sense does not know God or His creation. But the good news is that we each have an innate spiritual sense. This spiritual sense, Science and Health explains, “is a conscious, constant capacity to understand God” (p. 209).

Each one of us, as God’s beloved child, is able to know and understand God, because He built us that way. We learn from the Bible that we are His image and likeness, His spiritual reflection. The Bible also tells us that God, Spirit, is “of purer eyes than to behold evil” (Habakkuk 1:13). As God’s reflection, we know what God knows, so in reality we also can know only good.

Few feel that they know only good, however. Everywhere we look we see reports of lack, loss, war, conflict, disease, sin. But as we learn to silence the material senses and their report of discord, we can hear Christ – the spiritual idea of Truth that is voicing God’s eternal good to us every moment.

The material senses, unable to comprehend what God knows, cannot give us any useful information. The sin, sickness, conflict, lack, that they report cannot be God-created. Therefore, they can exist only as a suggestion that there is something outside of God’s control, something He did not create. This suggestion is purely mesmeric, a lie presenting itself hypnotically as fact. We handle any form of mesmerism or hypnotism by replacing it with what’s true. Because God is Truth, no matter what situation we’re facing, we can turn to God for help and answers.

Experience tells us that until we reach the point where we are constantly conscious only of the presence of God and His perfect, spiritual creation, we will continue to be confronted with suggestions of evil. But Jesus, our Way-shower, demonstrated that those suggestions cannot stop our progress or inhibit in any way our ability to do good, be good, or feel good. And he showed that we always have God-given dominion over those suggestions.

As we silence material sense and strive to draw closer to God, Spirit, moment by moment, conforming our thoughts and actions to His spiritual law of good alone, we increasingly see that we don’t need to fear the unknown because we see His control and His goodness made manifest in our lives.

I was once faced with a decision I felt incapable of making. There were too many unknowns. I turned to God in prayer, hoping to get a sense of what decision would bring about the best future. But then I realized that, really, there was only one possible future – a future filled with God, Love, and His goodness. My motive was to do and to serve His will.

I felt confident that even if, humanly, it seemed I had made the wrong decision, I couldn’t be lost spiritually or disadvantage another of God’s children. And the experience itself would be a blessing to me and, I was sure, to others as well. I was grateful, but not surprised, when that did turn out to be the result of the decision I made.

As the definition of “unknown” in Science and Health continues, “Paganism and agnosticism may define Deity as ‘the great unknowable;’ but Christian Science brings God much nearer to man, and makes Him better known as the All-in-all, forever near” (p. 596).

The ancient Greeks feared and worshiped the unknown. We are free to love, worship, and, importantly, know the All-in-all. God, Love, holds us forever within His embrace. A future embraced by Love is a future we can all welcome!

Adapted from an editorial published in the January 2025 issue of The Christian Science Journal.