Each one by earnest study may gain something from the healing works of Christ Jesus, as recorded in the Bible, to meet his special needs. Being all-embracing in scope, the healing works cannot be narrowly interpreted, but should be seen as the effect of the application of an understanding of infinite divine Love to meet the needs of mankind. Jesus was the Way-shower in right thinking and healing. And in the divine Science of his teachings discovered by Mary Baker Eddy, his faithful follower, we have the rules of metaphysical healing which, if obeyed, cannot fail of right results. We as Christian Scientists, who have named the name of Christ and touched the hem of the Christly robe of healing, should so reflect Love in our every thought and activity that healing naturally and necessarily follows.
Whenever consecrated work in Christian Science does not bring healing, there is a reason, and it behooves us to ascertain what is the obstruction delaying or preventing demonstration. It cannot be in the rules clearly set forth in the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mrs. Eddy, for these rules, divinely revealed, must be and are demonstrable. Perhaps we are not correctly applying Christian Science or thinking rightly.
One phase of wrong thinking may here be considered, that of condemnation either of oneself or of another. It is usually accompanied by self-pity; and self-love unknowingly fosters self-condemnation. Self-love, like self-condemnation, accepts the mistaken sense of selfhood. Self-will often poses under self-justification, and when that, too, proves but a broken reed which does not support, it turns to another extreme—self-pity. These phases of belief in a selfhood apart from God are destroyed as one gains the true concept of man.
In my own experience I at times ran the gamut of self-condemnation, indulging self-love, self-pity, and all that lies between. I indulged in condemnation of others, to some degree was intolerant when others disagreed with me, and took offense at what others said or did. Tenaciously I clung to thoughts of self-pity and lived over and over again occurrences and conversations which led to condemnation of others. What morbid pleasure I found in such indulgence of wrong thinking, and how hard it seemed to let go! But I had to let go of a wrong sense of selfhood before I was healed of condemnation.
On page 8 of "Miscellaneous Writings," in an article entitled "Love Your Enemies," Mrs. Eddy says, "Simply count your enemy to be that which defiles, defaces, and dethrones the Christ-image that you should reflect." The one enemy to be faced, condemned, and destroyed is wrong thinking about God and man. How baseless, then, is the belief of a personal enemy that can harm, and how foolish to condemn another for what has in reality never occurred! If we see man to be the image of God, as the Bible declares him to be, and therefore perfect, as Christian Science teaches, we find that there actually is nothing in man to condemn.
To me the healing of the adulterous woman, as told in the eighth chapter of John, is an outstanding instance of the healing of condemnation. We read that when the accusers brought the woman before the Master and told him of her sin, demanding the full penalty of man-made law, "Jesus stooped down, and with his finger wrote on the ground, as though he heard them not" (verse 6). Was it that he did not hear the error they voiced, that before them was a sinning woman? He knew the nothingness of sin and its claim to belong to man. He "wrote on the ground." Perhaps he was recording error's claim to reality in the dust of the ground, dust which the next passing wind would blow away, so that the place that knew it would know it no more. Is that not all there is to the claims of error, since they are without reality, stability, permanence?
Then came his scathing denunciation of smugness and self-justification. "He that is without sin among you," he said, "let him first cast a stone at her." And we are told that "again he stooped down, and wrote on the ground." Knowing that the sins of the accusers were as unreal, as ephemeral, as the sin they would fasten upon the woman, did he write that record too in the dust of the ground, nothingness?
"Being convicted by their own conscience," healed too, we may hope, by the love and compassion of the Master, they "went out one by one." Then came his momentous question to the woman, "Hath no man condemned thee?"
"No man, Lord," was her reply.
This brought his benediction, "Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more." Jesus knew that the real man, spiritual and perfect, condemns not, and neither is he condemned.
May we so grow in love and spiritual understanding that we too can write the claim of error, be it condemnation of self or another, or whatever its claim, in the dust of the ground. Seeing the unreality of error, neither accepting nor voicing it, we can rise to the realization of the true man and his spiritual nature, pure, perfect, and faultless, and thereby heal as Jesus healed.
So long as we believe man to be material, believe life to be in matter, we are prone to condemn; but whether condemnation be of self or another, it never heals. Condemnation of the error does heal, through the realization of its nothingness and powerlessness. Christ Jesus condemned the sin but not the person, and Christian Science teaches us to do likewise. Condemnation of person is mortal mind speaking, and we should not listen to it. Mortal mind is silenced as in earnest prayer the voice of God is heard; and when Mind speaks it is of perfect God and perfect man.
Healing of condemnation of another may be realized through that love which sees a brother's need and supplies it. And what, it may be asked, is our brother's need? Is it not that we see him as he is in reality, God's perfect idea? And in that realization of truth about our brother man, is not our own need met?
In the healing of condemnation much can be gained from a study of the definition of man found on pages 475 to 477 of Science and Health. In this marvelous explication of what is and what is not the real man, Mrs. Eddy declares (p. 475), "Man is spiritual and perfect; and because he is spiritual and perfect, he must be so understood in Christian Science." Understanding, or knowing, the spirituality and perfection of man is mandatory, not optional, in the practice of Christian Science, and this understanding eliminates completely the condemnation of person.
Mrs. Eddy also makes this clear in her great statement about man which is so often quoted and used, and which is limitless in its healing possibilities and complete in its healing instruction (ibid., pp. 476, 477): "Jesus beheld in Science the perfect man, who appeared to him where sinning mortal man appears to mortals. In this perfect man the Saviour saw God's own likeness, and this correct view of man healed the sick." "This correct view of man" healed both the sick and the sinning. It gave sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf, feet to the lame, speech to the dumb; it even raised the dead. And the same correct view heals today in Christian Science, heals through Love, never through condemnation, when the perfect man, not sick and sinning mortal man, appears to us as the real, the only, man.
Just as the casting from consciousness of all condemnation of self or of another aids immeasurably in individual healing work, so freedom from condemnation of class or nation aids immeasurably in solving universal problems. We cannot expect freedom from industrial warfare if condemnation exists between groups of individuals, nor can we expect true and lasting peace if nations are condemning or misjudging one another. In understanding of and obedience to the Ten Commandments and the Golden Rule is healing to be gained, individually, nationally, and internationally. "The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations," we are told in Revelation (22:2).
May the seeming faults of men find no niche in our consciousness. May we ever eliminate from consciousness "that which denies, defaces, and dethrones the Christ-image," and behold "in Science the perfect man." Love, not condemnation, heals.
