“When God feels more real to me, disease can be seen as unreal”
/1. Century didn’t so much change my view of Christian Science healing as confirm important points that are easy to lose sight of in the midst of a challenge:
Healing may take a long or a short time, but it is ultimately natural and for everyone.
While physical relief is wonderful, it is understanding the reality of good and the unreality of evil that brings profound joy.
All good is ours to accept, but there are times when character reformation, the rejection of stubbornly held beliefs, and radical persistence are required to receive the gift of healing.
Reflecting unselfed love for others and separating evil from our thought of man is crucial.
When we are obedient, God helps us overcome errors in consciousness, resulting in healing.
If others in more desperate circumstances than ours could be faithful to Truth and triumph over evil, so can we!
2. It was my first reading of Century in high school that really turned me on to Christian Science. At that time, my favorite testimonies were Joseph Mann’s healing of the gunshot wound to the heart and Peter Henniker-Heaton’s restoration after ten years of paralysis. Those dramatic experiences convinced me that Christian Science was the truth and could heal anything.
I’m so grateful to have had a reason to reread the book. This time, flagging and rereading the metaphysical ideas that stand out to me has made this reading even more meaningful. By that measure, a favorite testimony is by Richard Knox Lee (p. 80), who after surviving diphtheria, was stricken with heart trouble and consumption of both lungs and finally given up by the doctors. The metaphysics are clear and compelling:
“...the many kind doctors…had gone to my body and done what they could for that, but had paid no attention to my thought, which directly controlled my body. Now the Christian Scientist did exactly the reverse: she took no notice of my body but went straight to my thought and set that right with the truth of being…that God made man perfect, in His own spiritual image and likeness, and that as I realized I was that image and likeness, I would lose the sense of disease and be free from it.”
I can truly relate to Mr. Lee when he writes, “...I found passages [in SH] that gave me fresh hope and encouragement, especially where it says: ‘Waking to Christ’s demand, mortals experience suffering. This causes them, even as drowning men, to make vigorous efforts to save themselves; and through Christ’s precious love these efforts are crowned with success.’” (22:6)
“Then and there I decided that I, too, would make vigorous efforts to save myself by turning resolutely away from fear, self-pity, and the distressing symptoms of disease, and holding my thoughts to this new and enlightened sense of God and man… .”
So often when I’ve felt as though I were drowning in some problem, I’ve remembered that statement from Science and Health and been roused to make vigorous efforts to save myself from suffering by turning away from the same errors Mr. Lee did and lifting my thought to God. Each time, the Christ has provided the inspiration to meet the need of the moment and to move me a step forward in spiritual growth. Like the practitioner on his case, I’ve been forced to disregard the body and go back to the simple truths of God and man in His image.
Another testimony I continue to revisit is by Robert Shannon, (p. 97) who was dramatically healed of a devastating eye injury. What I love most is his statement at the end:
“I was rejoicing through all this false thinking and manifestation in that I knew of the efficacy of Christian Science, that I had been a witness to the presence of the healing power of the Christ, Truth, which had annulled one of the so-called strong laws of matter the instant it was applied, and that the Bible truths are applicable to our every human need and are demonstrable – “God with us.’”
It’s so inspiring that he was able to rejoice even while the “false thinking and manifestation” were still going on. He tells us his buoyancy was possible for three reasons: he knew Christian Science heals, he’d already witnessed its healing power in his experience, and he was convinced that the Bible promises are universal and provable. Whenever I return to these basic points – that I know Christian Science heals, I’ve personally experienced it, and I do accept the Bible promises – I find myself re-grounded on the rock of Truth and ready to move forward. When God feels more real to me, disease can be seen as unreal, and the joy is there.
3. It has been so encouraging to read about the same healing Christ at work in the lives of Association members and guests today. The testimonies on the website are strengthening and inspiring. In “Prayer for Church and Sunday School brings some immediate results,” the account of a Boy Scout trip when the writer healed his fear of tetanus reminded me of a healing I had as a teenager.
My mother and grandmother had suffered from severe menstrual pain, and I seemed to have inherited that problem. There wasn’t an expectation that it could be healed, and I’d been satisfied with being able to manage the condition. Though I was grateful I didn’t suffer as much as my relatives had, I was a pretty serious Sunday School student and felt that healing should be possible.
One Saturday morning I was lying on the sofa with a hot water bottle over my stomach, regretting that I wouldn’t be able to participate in a daylong hike with my Sunday School to a beautiful wilderness area. However, as I struggled between studying the Bible Lesson and feeling gripped by pain, something within me rebelled at being ruled by this condition. I didn’t realize it then, but it must have been the Christ rousing my thought.
I finally decided I was going on this hike! To my mother’s surprise, I got up and announced my decision just in time to join the group before they left on the excursion. The pain tried to persist, but having taken my stand, I was strengthened to continue resisting it all through the long drive and rugged hike up a steep mountain. The longer I persisted, the easier it became to mentally stay the course, and the more dominion I felt. I don’t recall the moment when my freedom came, but I do remember having a really fun time, and looking back I see the experience was an important steppingstone of spiritual growth.
I’ve been recording my healings and mental breakthroughs for a long time but not as far back as that teenage incident. It’s good to see how progress is a building process. We can see our early demonstrations in the way our Leader spoke of her first writings: “... she values them as a parent may treasure the memorials of a child’s growth, and she would not have them changed.” (SH ix:32 she)
4. Over the last several months as I’ve struggled to move to the next level in healing, I’ve been realizing with increasing urgency that each day I need to answer rightly these three questions: “Have you renounced self? Are you faithful? Do you love?” (Mis. 238:22)
Holding to the sense of a personal self that is in turns suffering, frightened, mesmerized, self-conscious, agitated, reactionary, etc., has a stultifying effect on thought. To the degree that I’ve been able to reject this self when it argues for existence, I’ve moved forward. The challenge is to keep on rejecting it, and that’s where faithfulness comes in.
Reading Century has been so helpful because it reminds me of why I should and can be faithful. We’re faithful to what we love, and I love what the book reveals about the promise of Christian Science, springing from the nature of God as Love.
In the following wartime experience, I’m inspired by the testifier’s demonstration of both faithfulness and love:
“Few people know the suffering and the sacrifices made up there... You will never know what Christian Science meant to me... At all times I kept the fundamentals of what I have learned foremost in my thought, and under the most desperate circumstances I held fast to Principle. In the daytime I read – sometimes aloud to my foxhole buddy...cramped there in the bitter cold. At night I prayed while standing watch. I did not pray selfishly, either, nor for myself, but just for freedom from this world of materiality for all of us.” (p. 121)
Every day I’m discovering new ways to answer Mrs. Eddy’s three questions rightly.