Queen Elizabeth I, as she sat in a church service one morning, was reputed to have called out: "To your text, Preacher!' Of course, she could do this without endangering her head. Thinking about the text I've chosen, trust I shall keep to it in this blog.
Having been in more than one discussion with those who have scoffed at what Christian Scientists contend -- the unreality of physical difficulties -- I have thought much about this. And the following words from Mary Baker Eddy's "Unity of Good", pages 9 and 10 have been one of my back-ups. She explains, "What is the cardinal point of the difference in my metaphysical system? This: that by knowing the unreality of disease, sin, and death, you demonstrate the allness of God. This difference wholly separates my system from all others. The reality of these so-called existences I deny, because they are not to be found in God, and this system is built on Him as the sole cause. It would be difficult to name any previous teachers, save Jesus and his apostles, who thus have taught."
Now, someone might be thinking, well, all this sounds good. But is it practical? Yes, it is. Not only have I proved it time and time again with various bodily challenges, but I'll cite another healing from my own family. I have mentioned my mother and what brought her into the study of Christian Science. It was, as I have said, a remarkable healing by all accounts.
Some time later, she began to experience a condition that needed to be met through Christ healing. She was leaving a Christian Science lecture one afternoon, where the power-house speaker had made clear the fact of man's true and only state as God's perfect child. He had discussed in detail what the first chapter of the Bible brings out, about man having been made in God's own likeness, in the likeness of Spirit--not matter. And something he said, to the effect that disease not having been created by God, good, it was in fact untrue, unreal, non-existent, so lit up her thought, that as she was walking back up the aisle out of that hall, she felt the healing taking place. She knew healing was going on, and so it proved. By the next day, the physical evidence that had seemed so real for so long had almost faded into nothing. And it was only a day or two longer she told us that the whole thing was as though it had never been. Which of course it had not, in reality. She said, in recounting this experience, I had some sense of what the lepers must have felt like when Jesus healed them!
So, not just airy words, this assertion of Christian Science that disease is unreal. To believe otherwise would be to deny God's perfect creation, and to see ourselves a way He did not make us. As a practitioner friend of mine says to patients, if you can find it in the first chapter of the Bible, then I'll believe it. As Genesis 1:31 states: "And God saw everything that He had made, and behold, it was very good."
This is a vast subject, and can't be dealt with wholly in this brief blog post. But this may be a stepping-stone for someone getting a higher understanding of how it is that disease is actually unreal.
