THE "GRAVEN IMAGES" OF FALSE CONCEPTS:

A concept, according to my Webster's, is "an idea or thought, especially a generalized
idea of a class of objects; abstract notion." In order to determine whether or not we
are worshipping God, or we are making "graven images" unlike the one true Spirit,
we need to understand what concepts we hold about God and His creation. Christian
Science stresses the importance of purifying our consciousness of "false concepts" or
material or mortal concepts. We cannot worship God if we cannot see, or understand,
Him, and we cannot see Him if our mind is clogged with materiality. So the false
concepts have to go!

"It is the false conceptions of Spirit, based on the evidences gained from the material
senses, that make a Christian only in theory, shockingly material in practice, and form
its Deity out of the worse human qualities, else of wood or stone."
(People's Idea of God 2)

"Every concept which seems to begin with the brain begins falsely." (S&H 262)

"The mind supposed to exist in matter or beneath a skull bone is a myth, a
misconceived sense and false conception as to man and Mind." (S&H 281)

"Is God a physical personality? Spirit is not physical. The belief that a material
body is man is a false conception of man. The time has come for a finite conception
of the infinite and of a material body as the seat of Mind to give place to a diviner
sense of intelligence and its manifestation, -- to the better understanding that Science
gives of the Supreme Being, or divine Principle, and idea." (S&H 285)

"A mortal, corporeal, or finite conception of God cannot embrace the glories of
limitless, incorporeal Life and Love. Hence the unsatisfied human craving for
something better, higher, holier, than is afforded by a material belief in a physical
God and man." (S&H 258)

"Mortal man has made a covenant with his eyes to belittle Deity with human
conceptions. In league with material sense, mortals take limited views of all things.
That God is corporeal or material, no man should affirm." (S&H 255)

"The everlasting I AM is not bounded nor compressed within the narrow limits of
physical humanity, nor can He be understood aright through mortal concepts. The
precise form of God must be of small importance in comparison with the sublime
question, What is infinite Mind or divine Love? (S&H 256)

"The fading forms of matter, the mortal body and material earth, are the fleeting
concepts of the human mind. They have their day before the permanent facts and
their perfection in Spirit appear." (S&H 263-264)

"The human mind will sometime rise above all material and physical sense,
exchanging it for spiritual perception, and exchanging human concepts for the divine
consciousness. Then man will recognize his God-given dominion and being."
(S&H 531)

"Mortal thought transmits its own images, and forms its offspring after human
illusions. God, Spirit, works spiritually, not materially. Brain or matter never
formed a human concept." (S&H 259)

"The realm of the real is Spirit. The unlikeness of Spirit is matter, and the opposite
of the real is not divine, -- it is a human concept. . . . Nothing we can say or believe
regarding matter is immortal, for matter is temporal and is therefore a mortal
phenomenon, a human concept, sometimes beautiful, always erroneous." (S&H 277)

"Clothing Deity with personality, we limit the action of God to the finite senses.
We pray for God to remember us, even as we ask a person with softening of the
brain not to forget his daily cares. . . . We expect infinite Truth to mix with error,
and become finite for a season; and, after infinite Spirit is forced in and out of matter
for an indefinite period, to show itself infinite again . . . Friends, can we ever arrive
at a proper conception of the divine character, and gain a right idea of the Principle
of all that is right, with such self-evident contradictions?" (Christian Healing 4)

". . . Proportionately as the people's belief in God, in every age, has been
dematerialized and unfinited has their Deity become good; no longer a personal
tyrant or a molten image, but the divine Life, Truth, and Love, -- Life without
beginning or ending, Truth without a lapse or error, and Love universal, infinite,
eternal." (People's Idea of God 2)

"The worshippers of wood and stone have a more material deity, hence a lower

order of humanity, than those who believe that God is a personal Spirit. But the

worshippers of a person have a lower order of Christianity than he who understands

that the Divine Being is more than a person, and can demonstrate in part that this great

impersonal Life, Truth, and Love, casting out error and healing the sick. This all-

important understanding is gained in Christian Science, revealing the one God and

His all-power and ever-presence, and the brotherhood of man in unity of Mind and

oneness of Principle." (People's Idea of God 13)

WORSHIPPING GOD SPIRITUALLY:

Once we separate our concept of God from any and all material forms, we still have
to make sure that when we worship Him -- when we set about to show our devotion
and reverence for Him -- that we worship Him with our spiritual sense, and not
through material means. This gets down to what the Second Commandment is about:
watching our thinking to see that our method of worship is of the highest and purest
standards. Do we settle for traditional rituals, or repetitious prayers that may have
grown stale and have little meaning for us as we say them? Or, do we offer our most
heartfelt desires to God, and adore Him with our deepest gratitude? We can all do
better here. According to Christian Science, our spiritual growth is dependant upon
keeping our worship of God on a spiritual basis:

"Whatever materializes worship hinders man spiritual growth and keeps him from
demonstrating his power over error." (S&H 5)

"We worship spiritually, only as we cease to worship materially. Spiritual devout-
ness is the soul of Christianity. Worshipping through the medium of matter is
paganism. Judaic and other rituals are but types and shadows of true worship. 'The
true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth.'" (S&H 140)

"Dost thou 'love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with
all thy mind'? This command includes much, even the surrender of all merely
material sensation, affection, and worship. This is the El Dorado of Christianity."
(S&H 9)

"The Israelites centered their thoughts on the material in their attempted worship of
the spiritual. To them matter was substance, and Spirit was shadow. They thought
to worship Spirit from a material standpoint, but this was impossible. They might
appeal to Jehovah, but their prayer brought down no proof that it was heard, because
they did not sufficiently understand God to be able to demonstrate His power to heal,
-- to make harmony the reality and discord the unreality." (S&H 351)

"Moses advanced a nation to the worship of God in Spirit instead of matter. . .
(S&H 200)

"As mortals do not comprehend even mortal existence, how ignorant must they be of
the all-knowing Mind and of His creations. Here you may see how so-called
material sense creates its own forms of thought, gives them material names, and then
worships and fears them. With pagan blindness, it attributes to some material god
or medicine an ability beyond itself. The beliefs of the human mind rob and enslave
it, and then impute this result to another illusive personification, named Satan."
(S&H 187)

"Holy Writ declares that God is love, is Spirit, hence it follows that those who
worship Him, must worship Him spiritually, -- far apart from physical sensation such
as attends eating and drinking corporeally. It is plain that aught unspiritual, inter-
vening between God and man, would tend to disturb the divine order, and countermand
the Scripture that those who worship the Father must worship Him in spirit. It is also
plain, that we should not seek and cannot find God in matter, or through material
methods; neither do we love and obey Him by means of matter, or the flesh, -- which
warreth against Spirit, and will not be reconciled thereto."
(Miscellaneous Writings 123-124)

"The restoration of pure Christianity rests solely on spiritual understanding, spiritual
worship, spiritual power. Ask thyself, Do I enter by the door and worship only Spirit
and spiritually, or do I climb up some other way? Do I understand God as Love, the
divine Principle of all that really is, the infinite good, than which there is none else
and in whom is all? Unless this be so, the blind is leading the blind, and both will
stumble into doubt and darkness, even as the ages have shown." (Miscellany 152)

"Do I believe in a personal God? I believe in God as the Supreme Being. I know
not what the person of omnipotence and omnipresence is, or what the infinite
includes; therefore, I worship that of which I can conceive, first, as a loving Father
and Mother; then, as thought ascends the scale of being to diviner consciousness,
God becomes to me, as to the apostle who declared it, 'God is Love,' -- divine
Principle, -- which I worship; and 'after the manner of my fathers, so worship I
God.'" (Miscellaneous Writings 96)


The teachings of Christian Science on the Second Commandment, clearly promote
obedience of that rule by its emphasis on spiritualizing our concepts of God and our
worship of Him in accord with the Word of the New Testament.


Return to start of the Second Commandment

Practicing the Second Commandment in Daily Life

Second Commandment for Children

The Ten Commandments

First Lessons for Children