When Christ Jesus said, "Call no man your father upon the earth, for one is your Father which is in heaven" (Matthew 23:9), he was not calling for an attack on filial devotion. Rather, it was for the rejection of a third party in the divine Parent/child relationship.
Of course, one cares for his human father. And those of us who were blessed with a wonderful parent will always be grateful for the love and devotion we experienced. For Jesus' followers, Christly loving is a necessity--since Jesus illustrated the fact that wholehearted love for God naturally encompasses love for man. Expressing love for one and all is the supreme proof of discipleship. For this reason we can never outgrow the need to express warmth, compassion, and unselfishness toward those nearest us.
While Jesus' words might seem to indicate hat he didn't consider the circumstances of human birth to have ultimate claims on us, couldn't he really be saying that true relationship lies in our oneness with God--in this spiritual unity of thought and purpose. His teaching seems to me to be calling on all to realize that our origin, identity, selfhood, qualities, and so on, are in God, divine Spirit, not in a mortal ancestry. And the sooner we begin this spiritual discovery, the greater the freedom for ourselves and those we interact with.
Christian Science brings to light man's wonderful relationship to God. And through its teachings one can learn to know himself spiritually, scientifically--not as a conglomeration of material beliefs and limitations, but as the spiritual expression of divine Mind, manifesting freedom, grace, beauty, and dominion. When we learn to rely more consistently on divine Mind, God, for happiness and well-being, we begin to find release from the incorrect view of ourselves and this blessed all involved.
Mary Baker Eddy, after pointing out our need to gravitate toward God, says in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, "This scientific sense of being, forsaking matter for Spirit, by no means suggests man's absorption into Deity and the loss of his identity, but confers upon man enlarged individuality, a wider sphere of thought and action, a more expansive love, a higher and more permanent peace." (p. 265) And don't we all want this?
The mortal dream of life as a material existence separated from God cant furnish the correct estimate of our identity or anyone else's. Our true spiritual selfhood, ours and mine, has never been shaped or marred by material events and circumstances. However ideal one's relationship with his human father, all that material history tells us of a family background, conditioning, and so forth is without a particle of reality in the universe of God, good. As Science and Health states: "The eternal Truth destroys what mortals seem to have learned from error, and man's real existence as a child of God comes to light."(pp. 288-289)
We all have access to an endless amount of support and inspiration from God. He loves His children unceasingly and has provided through the clear spiritual teachings of Christ Jesus the way for one to free himself from any lingering unhappiness. In a letter to one of the branch churches in the Christian Science movement, Mrs. Eddy wrote: "God is our Father and our Mother, ,our Minister and the great Physician. He is man's only real relative on earth and in heaven. David sang, "Whom have I in heaven but thee? and there is none upon earth that I desire beside thee."
"Brother, sister, beloved in the Lord, knowest thou thyself, and art acquainted with God? If not, I pray thee as a Christian Scientist, delay not to make Him thy first acquaintance." Miscellaneous Writings , p. 151
And as the Bible says of our relationship to our heavenly Father, "Behold, all souls are mine; as the soul of the father, so also the soul of the son is mine." (Ezekiel 18:4)
