The smudge on the mirror

As we recognize ourselves as the image and likeness of God, we lose sight of the flaws that come from seeing ourselves as material.

The smudge on the mirror Have you ever glanced in the mirror and seen a blemish, only to find it was just a smudge on the mirror? My mother, a student of Christian Science, once found a co-worker looking in a bathroom mirror, distressed at the state of her complexion. Filled with compassion, my mom told her that she was the image of God.

Because of that, whenever she looked in the mirror, she could say to herself, I will “lift up [my] face without spot,” as the Bible says (Job 11:15). The co-worker appreciated this inspired idea and felt the love behind it. She gladly accepted the advice.

When my mom saw her a few days later, her face was spotless. Christian Science reveals that there’s only one God, one infinite Mind, so this story reminds me that the only one who truly sees is God. And what does God see in us?

It must be the reflection of His own purity, beauty, health, and harmony. We can be sure that any evidence of impurity, illness, or imperfection in the image is actually “a smudge on the mirror” – a material assumption, and not the reality. We want to be quick to scrub those misconceptions from thought, for our sake and the world’s.

Mary Baker Eddy, who authored the Christian Science textbook, “Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures,” discovered that Christ Jesus’ healings were accomplished by just such clear knowing and seeing, and proved it for herself in a multitude of cases. She learned what the needed “solvent” is, and what exactly it is that needs dissolving. In Science and Health, she encourages, “In patient obedience to a patient God, let us labor to dissolve with the universal solvent of Love the adamant of error, – self-will, self-justification, and self-love, – which wars against spirituality and is the law of sin and death” (p. 242).

A smudge is sticky. The serpent lie of physicality, with all its debris of sickness, sin, and death, would get us to use the words “me,” “my,” and “mine” in relation to such false beliefs, in an attempt to try and smudge our spiritual selfhood – God’s pure likeness. This erroneous “smudge-self” would also attach conditions that are unlike God’s image to others, with words such as “his” illness, “her” meanness, “their” blindness.

But of course, it can’t! No smudge attaches itself to any reflection in the mirror, and a smudge absolutely cannot become part of God’s image and likeness. Only God and His idea is present, and is forever spiritual, perfect, eternal.

The boundless divine Love that is Truth, realized, dissolves into nothingness both the erroneous sense of self as well as its attachments to shadows of fear, sin, age, disability, etc. God’s image shines free. Knowing we always reflect God’s spiritual perfection, we can cheerfully labor to remove the smudges of imperfect material selfhood from our thinking, even if this involves persistent, or at times vigorous, scrubbings and rinsings.

Isn’t it worth it? As the mirror of consciousness becomes crystal clear, our seeing will be God’s seeing, revealing the forever-shining health, beauty, and purity of everyone. It’s called healing.

Originally published in the November 2022 issue of The Christian Science Journal.