THE word "malpractice" came to my attention for the first time when I was attending a Christian Science lecture and overheard a young Sunday School pupil say to a friend, "Don't malpractice me!" The remark made humorously provoked questioning, but it was years before I grasped the implication of that quip.
If Christian Science is to be rightly practiced, it is important to know what is meant by that word "malpractice," since malpractice is the counterfeit of real or right practice. The word is formed by attaching the prefix "mal," denoting ill, bad, evil, to the word "practice," Consequently, "malpractice" means thinking wrongly, giving activity to evil instead of to good. It has to do with wrong practice instead of right practice. Since a rule which the sacred Scriptures state is, "Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap" (Gal. 6:7), how necessary it is to individual well-being and spiritual growth to think good thoughts and to practice rightly, not wrongly!
In the first chapter of Genesis, man is depicted as God's likeness. This man knows only good. In following chapters an allegory depicts a material sense of creation, in which mortal man is forbidden to eat "of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil" (2:17). He is told that if he does, he will die. Yet ignorantly and disobediently mankind partakes of false knowledge and brings upon itself the woes which evil produces.
