By: John Wellsman
Many people today ponder what Jesus would do in a particular situation and often the conclusion is that he would turn the other cheek or practice some other inoffensively passive behavior in the face of aggression. Yet Jesus’ three-year ministry was a healing ministry. He didn’t just avoid confrontations, he healed. He healed disease as well as many other situations and conditions. Thus his ministry went far beyond the “Golden Rule.”
A far more important question to ask is: What would Jesus think? What would he think when confronted with some dreaded disease or discordant situation? What did he know that enabled him to heal and perform the so-called “miracles?”
Scholastic theology generally overlooks the fact that not only did Jesus heal cases himself but he taught others to heal as well. Most notably the disciples. In fact Jesus once sent forth a group of seventy students at one time who returned to report, “Even the devils are subject to us through thy name!” (Luke 10:17) These individuals obviously healed situations and people as well through what they learned from Jesus.
Few people in the history of Christianity have apparently pondered how Jesus was able to heal and teach others to heal. Most prefer the traditionally accepted position that Jesus had a personal and unique dispensation to perform “miracles.” Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of the Christian Science religion was one who refused to accept this limited view of Jesus’ mission. When she was healed through her own prayers of the effects of an apparently life-threatening accident in 1866, she realized that many had been healed over the centuries through deeply Christian prayer. However she alone became determined to know exactly how Jesus had healed. In her words, “I knew…cures were produced in primitive Christian healing by holy, uplifting faith; but I must know the Science of this healing,” (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures 109:16). She was perhaps the first and only person up to that time who realized Jesus’ method of healing was purely mental.
Thus it is not surprising that Mrs. Eddy included as one of the fundamental tenets of Christian Science that adherents of the religion should, “…solemnly promise to watch, and pray for that Mind to be in us which was also in Christ Jesus;” (Science & Health p. 497:24)
Neither is it surprising that she applied the term “Science” to Christianity. Indeed Webster defines Science in part as: “Accumulated and established knowledge, which has been systematized and formulated with reference to the discovery of general truths or the operation of general laws; knowledge classified and made available in work, life, or the search for truth; comprehensive, profound, or philosophical knowledge.” That’s quite different from today’s generally accepted view of “science.”
From these two facts, we can determine that Mary Baker Eddy actually sought to gather the “general truths or…general laws…comprehensive, profound or philosophical knowledge” regarding Jesus’ healing ministry so that it could be taught or transferred to individuals today in order that those individuals could demonstrate in their own lives the healing “miracles” practiced by Jesus and his disciples.
In short, she was determined to know what Jesus knew or how he thought in order to heal. She wanted to know what Jesus was he conscious of in order to perform these “miracles?”
Over a period of three years of deeply profound Scriptural study, Mary Baker Eddy learned both what and how Jesus thought or knew in order to perform his healing “miracles.” She explains it thus in Science and Health, the textbook which she wrote describing the results of her study: “Jesus beheld in Science the perfect man, who appeared to him where sinning mortal man appears to mortals. In this perfect man the Savior saw God's own likeness, and this correct view of man healed the sick.” (p. 476:32)
Two things should be pointed out here. First Mrs. Eddy had a far different view or definition of “sin” than the currently accepted view that sin is essentially sexual misconduct—physical or mental. She defines it thus: “Sin was, and is, the lying supposition that life, substance, and intelligence are both material and spiritual” in her book “Retrospection and Introspection” (p. 67:6).
Second, the Bible describes man’s origin thus: “God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him;” (Gen 1:27) Considering the previously referred to quotation in which she describes how Jesus healed, Mrs. Eddy obviously realized that what Jesus knew or “beheld” was man in God’s own image—the perfect man, spiritual, not material—instead of a man who considered himself/herself as both material and spiritual. And this realization of man made in God’s image enabled Jesus to heal the sick and perform other “miracles” which defied a purely material view of creation. Not only by Jesus himself but by anyone who could achieve this knowledge of the “perfect man.” The Bible records Jesus as saying, “Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto my Father.” John 14:12.
Elsewhere, Mrs. Eddy says, “Holding the right idea of man in my mind, I can improve my own, and other people's individuality, health, and morals;” Miscellaneous Writings p. 62:1. Through her own prayers and those of her students over many years, she proved conclusively that by thinking or knowing the facts of being as Jesus knew them anyone could perform the types of “miracles” which Jesus performed. And this thinking or understanding is just as powerful and available today as it was in Jesus’ time or Mrs. Eddy’s day. Which leads to this conclusion: It can be learned and practiced by anyone sincerely desiring to know what Jesus knew.
