God's Way to Good Health

        For me the study of Christian Science offers many advantages.  Not the least is that through its spiritual truths we are able to heal ourselves and others of various physical troubles through prayer.

        Someone might be thinking, "So Christian Science works for you. But when you're sick why not just take some medicine or go have a doctor fix you up?  Wouldn't this be less trouble?"

        From the standpoint of Christian Science, I can think of at least two reasons for not taking medicine.  First, if I looked on myself as nothing more than flesh, blood, and bones--what the physical senses can see--then it might be just as well to depend on material means for regaining and maintaining health.  But along with most religions, Christian Science asserts the validity and reality of the spiritual, the unseen but nonetheless real world of God, divine Spirit.  Where my religion differs from these religions is that it takes the radical position that the spiritual is the actual, the substantial, whereas the material is illusory, transitory.  It asserts that if man is the image of God, made in His very likeness, as the Bible says, then man must, of necessity, be spiritual, perfect right now, contrary to material appearances.  The goal of Christian Science, then, is not alone the healing of bodily ills but the putting off of materiality and limitation in all its forms.  And this is done by striving consistently for full salvation in the way Christ Jesus taught.

        My second reason for sticking to spiritual healing as taught in Christian Science is that if I intend to follow in Jesus' steps, I can't do this unless I am fully obedient to all his commands:  and one of his most important injunctions is "Heal the sick."  (Matthew 10:8)  Since I know of no other religion that explains how Jesus healed on a divinely mental basis, on the basis of provable Principle and law, Christian Science has become, for me, the way to be obedient to this injunction and to heal by spiritual means alone.

        Jesus said:  "Believe me that I am in the Father, and the Father in me:  or else believe me for the very works' sake.  Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also."  (John 14:11, 12)  He healed all kinds of physical conditions spiritually, as did his disciples, and these healings verified the truth of the doctrine Jesus preached.  Today Christian Science is making available the Master's method.  It deals with disease from the spiritual standpoint that Spirit is the reality of man's life.  It sees disease as primarily mental, not physical.  It holds that matter's apparent substantiality is actually an illusion, a creation of the phsycail sense arising from the belief that substance is apart from God, Mind.  As radical as these statements may sound, they are foundational to the spiritual understanding of God that overcomes the supposed reality of sickness, sin, and death.

        Mary Baker Eddy's writings accentuate this vital aspect of Christlike demonstration.  She states; "My insistence upon a proper understanding of the unreality of matter and evil arises from their deleterious effect, physical moral, and intellectual, upon the race."  She continues at the bottom of the next page:  "What is the cardinal point of the difference in my metaphysical sysstem?  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."  ("Unity of Good", pp. 8, 9-10)

        Many people I know have proved through restored health and  normality that discord does not exist as a God-constituted reality but is an illusion of material sense.  As ignorance, fear, and false beliefs have yielded to the powerful, corrective Christ, Truth--to the recognition that God is perfect and man is now His perfect reflection--healing has come.  The action of Truth bringing light to one's consciousness destroys the darkness of fear and pain and lifts thought to see the all-presence of spiritual harmony.  It awakens us to see man as the exact likeness of infinite Spirit, spiritual and complete, governed by God's law of harmony and wholeness.

        At first it may seem difficult, if  not impossible, for one to believe that man can be anything other than the material person we see all the time--a flesh-and-blood mortal who is subject to suffering and disease.  Nevertheless, as so many men, women, and children have proved, there is power to heal in the spiritual understanding that one's real selfhood is inseparable from Spirit, God, good.  What's more a Truth-enlightened mental state is inevitably objectified in one's experience as increased freedom and normality.  As Jesus showed us conclusively, this is God's way to good health.