“The problem was NEVER real”

For decades I found myself dealing with an ear infection that much of the time was pretty troublesome. I had lost most of the hearing in the ear, sometimes it was painful, and nearly every day – often multiple times a day – it needed to be cleaned. Early on, I found myself getting frustrated with the apparent lack of progress. I would say the Lord’s Prayer or the scientific statement of being to myself, let it go, and then an hour later assume that the ear draining was proof I still didn’t know enough in Christian Science to heal. I attempted to make a deal with God, like Gideon in the Bible, “Dear God, if you’ll heal this ear for me, I’ll be a fully dedicated student.” I reasoned that if the problem was persistent then the problem must be that I didn’t “have faith as a grain of mustard seed” (MY 222). And I was forever looking around in thought for some wrong-headed thinking, some sin, something that was preventing me from understanding whatever thing it was that I needed to know in order to heal this problem.

Then, after some years I went to see a doctor, convinced that it was some foreign object that could be easily removed. Instead, the doctor said the condition would require surgery, and I returned to Science looking for my answer.

Over the years I also had help from Christian Science practitioners – all of whom were incredibly patient with me and very dear to work tirelessly when asked. They would say things like: “You can’t pull yourself up by your own bootstraps” or “it’s not a Rubik’s cube where you’re trying to find just the right combination of thoughts to think,” and “you can’t start from the standpoint of a real problem.”

Of course, all these statements are true, and I would dutifully write down – ‘no bootstraps’, ‘not a Rubik’s cube’, and ‘right thoughts’. The sticking point in all this, however, was that I was certain I had an infected ear that needed to be healed of some puncture, deformity, foreign object, or whatever.

What seems to be so challenging about chronic problems is this certainty that the problem is exactly that – a real problem with a real cause. In fact, what heals is simple to the all-knowing Mind, while the human mind can scarcely comprehend the truth that the problem was NEVER real. Somehow matter loves to suggest that we might achieve a solution and at that point call it unreal, but thought just goes on overload at the notion that it wasn’t real in the past.  

What heals is the understanding that it is a correct statement to say that God is the Only Cause and Creator – not in some merely conceptual way, not in some alternate universe, but plainly and simply. The argument that I had an infected ear was never true or correct about me. Why? Because “All is infinite Mind and its infinite manifestation, for God is All-in-all.” (SH 468). These aren’t just words to memorize and regurgitate back. It means decisively that chronic problems are best faced by knowing that God is the only creator and He created everything good. The suggestion of a problem is not good, therefore God didn’t make it, and you simply cannot have it, nor could you ever have had it.

Once it finally clicked with me that this was fact and not just some ethereal wishful thinking, the ear responded. It’s tempting to say '“So, it got better”, but I see that turn of phrase as a subtle attempt to imply that there once was a real problem. No, in fact, what happened is that just as a night dream fades from thought upon waking, so too, this ear condition faded. At first, the discharge ceased. And with further support from a practitioner normal hearing was restored.

I have been asked what was it that I saw that brought about the healing. The answer is simple – understanding and knowing that there was never a time when the problem was true about me. I would venture to say that every Bible Lesson reinforces that message in some way. If you look for it you will see it throughout the Bible and Science and Health, “God is infinite, the only Life, substance, Spirit, or Soul, the only intelligence of the universe, including man.” (SH 330)