When someone asks me this important question, I always say, the place to begin understanding Christian Science better is Mary Baker Eddy's major work, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures -- reading, studying, pondering the truths therein. And using what you are learning. Yes, starting right off applying divine facts to human challenges, which many newcomers have done with spectacular results.
And of course, the chapter titled "Christian Science Practice" gives many specific statements of divine fact that aid one in actually using what Christian Science brings out about God and man.
For the many readers of this blog who are curious about my religion, and who do not have this book at hand, the following may be of help. First, let me say that Christian Science is science applied to Christianity, and with any science, how would you begin making it practical? How would you start using what you have learned about music, or chemistry, or math? By simply using that knowledge as the occasion presents itself. There is nothing mysterious about this process, is there? You apply the rules, laws, principles of the discipline in question, do you not? And applying metaphysical truths to one's problems is no different than applying one's knowledge of the multiplication table, for example.
As its name implies, Christian Science is the demonstrable knowledge of Christ as a divine Principle, as the saving Truth, the Redeemer and "great Physician" of mankind. For the lack of this knowledge, for the lack of knowing what Jesus knew, people have submitted to the despotism of a supposed evil power with its attendant miseries. Christian Science, as many of us have found, supplies truths that free one from unnecessary limitation and suffering. It brings the freedom of knowing God as always present, all-powerful, ever available to lift one out of human fears and false beliefs.
As Christian Science makes clear, matter is but the sense of not knowing God, Spirit, and this negative sense is, therefore, to be reckoned with only as error, as untrue, unreal, therefore non-existent. Divine Science inspires one to look to and rely upon God as including all real causation, all real consciousness, law, substance, and power.
And a key point in understanding Christian Science more clearly and demonstrating what it teaches is recognizing that all which comes within the range of human consciousness is a mental state. What we think, or what is contained in our thoughts, make up individual experience. Things go wrong in one's life because human thought is first wrong, and things will continue to go wrong until this thought is set right, that is to say, brought into alignment with the divine facts about God and His man and universe.
If one's thought is scientifically Christian, it is based on the absolute allness of God, good and the consequent powerlessness and nothingness of aught besides Him. This is a Christian Science treatment, and from an unbiased study of the Gospels one must conclude that this was the Christ way.
Christian Science being based on Truth alone, on the absolute perfection of God and His creation, it follows that we cannot admit the opposite of this perfect Principle and the perfect idea, and at the same time practice Christian Science, any more than we could believe that one and one are both two and three and expect to do correct work in mathematics. Man is not both matter and spirit, both evil and good.
Although material sense pictures man as discordant and imperfect, as poor or miserable or sick or helpless, what will this testimony weigh with one who knows material sense to be a lie? What did it weigh with Jesus? How far will the claim of evil deceive one who is convinced in his heart that God is infinite, All? That God never made material conditions to afflict His offspring, that such are unreal?
Obviously the way we are thinking is the way we are treating ourselves; that is, we are mentally applying to ourselves what we hold to be true, and the result will be according to the truth or the error which makes up our thoughts. It is plain that it isn't difficult to think that one and one are two. In reality all that the student of Christian Science does is to remove from his thought whatever obstructs his realization of the allness of God. Whatever would make him believe that there is any other power or entity. As this is accomplished, his thought naturally takes in only the right view of things and shuts out the evil as unreal.
Christian Science does not create health, supply, opportunity, strength and so on. It reveals these conditions as belonging to man as the very image of his Maker, God. As the first chapter of the Holy Bible states: And God said, let us make man in our image and likeness, and let them have dominion...over all the earth."
I've had people say to me," I could rely on God's healing power, if I just had the will-power you apparently have." Will-power has nothing to do with Christ healing. Nor it is the human mind over matter. It is truth over error. When you apply mathematical truths to a problem, do you will the equations to work? No, it is your understanding that corrects the mistake and brings the right answer. "Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free", Jesus taught and proved for all time and for all mankind. (John8:32) Focusing on the error does not liberate.
I could give many examples of how I have dealt with a particular human problem. But how I would pray, work metaphysically, will differ from what you are inspired to do. But anytime we truly understand the divine fact about a given situation, anytime consciousness lights up with the truth of God's presence and power, and the lie fades from our thinking, does freedom and normality and healing come.
Mrs. Eddy points out in "Science and Health" on pages 476, 477 that "Jesus beheld in Science the perfect man, who appeared to him where sinning mortal man appears to mortals. In this perfect man the Saviour saw God's own likeness, and this correct view of man healed the sick. Thus Jesus taught that the kingdom of God is intact, universal, and that man is pure and holy."
And this is the way one applies Christian Science.
