When "Getting Older" Becomes a Spiritual Rebellion

Look, I'm not going to tell you aging doesn't exist. I see the mirror every morning. Same as you.

But here's what's been nagging at me about this week's lesson on Mortals & Immortals: What if the whole script we've been handed about decline, decay, and inevitable diminishment is just... wrong? Not "think positive and you'll be fine" wrong, but fundamentally, metaphysically backwards?

Paul had this wild instruction: "Put on the new self." Not improve the old one. Not manage its decline gracefully. Put on a completely different identity. Like it's a choice we're making every single day—morgue-bound mortal or something else entirely.

The Dream We Keep Mistaking for Reality

The lesson opens with this zinger: "Mortals are the Adam dreamers." We're walking around in a trance, convinced that material existence—with all its timelines and expiration dates—is the real deal. Meanwhile, there's this other identity, this "imperishable" one, just waiting for us to wake up and notice it.

Jacob's ladder dream gets it. He's sleeping on rocks (literal rocks!), and suddenly he sees this stairway between earth and heaven with traffic going both ways. When he wakes up, his response isn't "cool dream, bro." It's: "God was in this place and I didn't even know it."

That's us. God—Life itself—is right here, and we're too busy calculating our 401k life expectancy to notice.

The Caleb Loophole

My favorite bit in this lesson is Caleb. The guy is 85 years old and basically says, "I'm still as strong as I was at 40."

Now, before you roll your eyes and mutter something about biblical hyperbole, sit with this: What if he actually was? What if strength, vitality, clarity—what if those aren't tied to solar years at all, but to something else entirely? Something that doesn't decay because it was never material to begin with?

Science and Health puts it bluntly: "Man in Science is neither young nor old." Not "man in denial" or "man with really good genes." Man in Science—in the actual understanding of what we are.

The Part That Makes Me Squirm

Here's where it gets uncomfortable: "Mortals must gravitate Godward, their affections and aims grow spiritual... in order that sin and mortality may be put off."

Translation? We have to actually want something different. We can't just nod along with spiritual ideas while our real investments stay in the mortal-self portfolio. That ladder Jacob saw? It requires climbing. The "new self" Paul talked about? It requires putting it on.

Nobody else can do that for us.

Death: The Mortal Mind's Masterpiece

The lesson tackles death head-on (pun intended, I guess). Not with platitudes about heaven or reincarnation, but with this stark claim: death is "a mortal illusion."

The official whose son was dying went to Jesus. Jesus didn't say, "Don't worry, he'll go to a better place." He said, "Your son will live." Present tense. Active tense. And the kid recovered at the exact moment Jesus spoke.

What was Jesus seeing that the father couldn't? Not a sick mortal improving. The immortal identity that was always there, never actually threatened by fever or anything else.

"There is no death, no inaction, diseased action, overaction, nor reaction." That's not a feel-good affirmation. That's a statement about reality—the one we're invited to wake up to.

The Transfiguration: Spoiler Alert for Our Own Identity

When Jesus was transfigured on the mountain, his disciples saw something they couldn't unsee. His face shone. His clothes were radiant. Moses and Elijah showed up for a chat.

This wasn't Jesus getting a spiritual glow-up. This was the veil lifting enough for the disciples to glimpse what was always true—the "immortal spiritual man" that "alone represents the truth of creation."

And here's the kicker: that's our identity too. We're not working toward it. We're not earning it. We're uncovering it, recognizing it, putting it on.

So What's the "New Song"?

Both the Golden Text and the lesson's close invite us to "sing a new song." Not a revised version of the old mortality dirge with slightly more optimistic lyrics. An entirely different tune.

A song about identity that doesn't age, strength that doesn't fade, life that doesn't end. A song about waking up from the Adam dream and realizing we were never actually mortal to begin with—we just believed we were.

That's not denial. That's not naïveté. That's the most audacious claim Christianity (and Christian Science specifically) makes: You are not what you think you are. You're something infinitely better. Always have been.

The question is: are you willing to stop shuffling along with your eyes on the ground and actually look up?

Because God's already here. Always has been. We just keep sleeping through it.