Freedom From Fearing Disease

        People who take as Gospel media predictions of disease do not have to live with the fear of "Will I be  next?"  TV ads for drugs and pills can be especially vicious.  The intent may well be to save consumers' health, but in many cases it appears the motivation is to cause fear and create a demand for the product they're pushing.

        Fortunately, no one has to live with such tormenting worry.  There is a way not only to eliminate fear of these maladies but to prevent them from occurring.  Through the study and application of Christian Science, one may learn to defend oneself from disease and suffering.  The Christian Science textbook, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, written by Mary Baker Eddy, contains many things one can do mentally, prayerfully, to safeguard his physical harmony.  For example, it tells us:  "Stand porter at the door of thought.  Admitting only such conclusions as you wish realized in bodily results, you will control yourself harmoniously.  When the condition is present which you say induces disease, whether it be air, exercise, heredity, contagion. or accident, then perform your office as porter and shut out these unhealthy thoughts and fears.  Exclude from mortal mind the offending errors; then the body cannot suffer from them."

        The Bible speaks of the all-power of God, Spirit.  It tells of men and women through the ages who have proved God's uplifting and protective power.  One of the many passages in the Scriptures that offer a way out of worry is this one from Psalms:  "In God I will praise his word, in God I have put my trust; I will not fear what flesh can do unto me."

        To overcome fear is not to ignore disease but to undermine its very foundation.  Many are mastering fear and the discord associated with it through applying the liberating, strengthening, spiritual truth found in Christ Jesus' teachings and works.  The Maser understood fully the inseparability of man from God.  He knew that man is God's child, eternally safe in Him.  Discerning something of our real being as God's spiritual image, and expressing the purity that characterizes that being, we can come to feel the assurance of His care.  We can prove for ourselves that true immunity from disease and abiding peace of mind are found in the consciousness of God's omnipresence and perfect control.

        You and I as actually created in the likeness of Spirit, are not fleshly mortals at the mercy of whatever disease happens to be prevalent, not helpless before it.  God's child can never, even for a moment, be deprived of God's care, never robbed of his God-provided spiritual well-being.

        Everyone has the right to live without fear of becoming ill.  Yet Jesus emphasized the effect of what we entertain in thought.  He said:  "Not that which goeth into the mouth defileth a man; but that which cometh out of the mouth, this defileth a man...Those things which proceed out of mouth come forth from the heart."

        Understanding that thought affects every aspect of daily life, we realize the necessity of purifying our thoughts, of bringing them into harmony with the spiritual, perfect model of man as created by God.  Sickness, incapacity, suffering are not the immovable, objective realities they seem to be but are false states of thought that can be healed through prayer.

        Because you and I are actually the offspring of infinite, harmonious Spirit, and we include only those qualities Spirit imparts--health, joy, peace, dominion--the suffering and fear that may seem so challenging have no genuine power over us.  They are misconceptions, false human beliefs, not actually, God-created conditions.  And being misconceptions, they can be corrected through prayer, with the truth of man's inseparable relationship to God, of his uninterruptible well-being as God's own likeness.

        The Old Testament counsels us, "Be not afraid of sudden fear..."  No person needs to dread being overpowered  by some disease. The determining factor in each one's well-being is what he understands of his unity with God.  Equipped with the understanding of God's supreme government of all His creation and our uninvadable wholeness as His beloved child, we have a divine right to go about our daily lives without fear of getting sick.