One day, a few months ago, when the gardener got out of his truck, I noticed that he had a new dog with him. After reviewing the gardening work that needed to be done, I asked about the dog. The gardener said he had just adopted it from an animal rescue shelter a few days earlier and added that it had something called “kennel cough.” Just then the dog coughed, and it sounded like a human cough. I continued to work with the gardener for a few more minutes and then thought, “Wait a minute! Am I going to accept the belief that error is attached to this dog?”
Earlier that morning I had been studying the Christian Science Bible Lesson, and a citation in it came to me that fitted the moment perfectly: “The mistake of thinking that error can be real, when it is merely the absence of truth, leads to belief in the superiority of error” (Mary Baker Eddy, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 92). The word superiority jumped out at me, and I realized that error can never be superior to anything, since error has no spiritual identity or foundation, and, therefore, no power. I affirmed that God, good, was in control at that very moment, and always is, so error had no authority. I stood up and started walking toward the dog, who was inside the truck. As I walked, I silently declared that in reality this dog was a perfect, spiritual idea created by God. When I got to the truck, the dog and I made eye contact, and I said directly to the dog that he was God’s perfect idea.
In our study of Christian Science, we learn that harmony is the fact, and anything less is an illusion. I reasoned that what appeared to be a cough, whether human or animal, was nothing more than a belief that something besides good existed. Declaring the superiority of God let me see the nothingness of this error, and I knew that the healing had taken place. This prayerful work was finished in less than three minutes, and the dog immediately stopped coughing.
