Sickness and Overturning False Testimony

                                             John Robert Howell



        The false testimony of the five material senses, telling us we're experiencing physical discomfort, can be overturned with God's potent help.  I know it can.

        Several months while visiting friends in another city, my wife and I were taken out to dinner at a seafood restaurant.  The food seemed fine at the time.  However, later that evening I began having discomfort, which became more pronounced as the night wore on.  All signs pointed to food poisoning or something similar.

        Being a life-long student of Christian Science, I turned to its teachings for relief.  "I'm not helpless before this.  There's something I can do", came the comforting thought. 

        What were some of the truths I worked with prayerfully?  That God is the only genuine cause, the sole creator of the universe, including man, including me; that the true nature of creation is spiritual, wholly good, expressing God's nature; and that from the standpoint of absolute truth, all cause and effect are spiritual, and all is the perfect handiwork of God, divine Spirit.

        In particular, this statement from Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy brought me a reassuring sense of God's healing power:  "Banish the belief that you can possibly entertain a single intruding pain which cannot be ruled out by the might of Mind, and in this way you can prevent the development of pain in the body."  (page 39l)

        After a short time, no more than a couple of hours, the discomfort had disappeared.  How relieved and thankful I was to be spared any more bodily suffering!  And how wonderful that anyone can develop and depend on this same spiritual understanding.

        Through the study of Christian Science we're helped to see what healing truth is, the truth found in the Bible's pages.  It's that God is omnipotent and entirely good and that man is the image of God.  As the likeness of his creator, man forever expresses the divine nature.  And because God is Spirit, man is spiritual.  To be sure, we appear to be merely flesh and bones and subject to suffering.  But physicality isn't the actual or ultimate substance of our being because it's not the substance of God.  Man as the image of God is incorporeal, untouched by debilitating physical conditions.

        Because you and I are God's offspring, we can't be deprived of our Father's care or robbed of the spiritual well-being He provides.  We are not actually at the mercy of whatever ailment happens to challenge us, not  helpless before it, as my experience illustrates.