Imagine how it must have felt to be with Jesus after the resurrection. A few days before, it looked to his students as though everything had come to an end. The healings, the lessons, the incredible hope and joy, all gone. Their Teacher had been crucified.
And yet, here they were, talking and eating with this man who had risen out of a tomb. It wasn't over after all. Remarkably, it was all just beginning.
Jesus had done his part. Now it was up to the disciples to teach others. They were to establish a religion that would be distinguished, as his life had been, by healing works and love.
It wasn't going to be easy. They would face violent persecution from enemies, disagreement and rivalry among themselves. Yet from all we know there was great vitality and commitment among the first Christians. They were alive with the Christ-spirit because they'd caught hold of a wholly new view of life. They'd glimpsed something of man's spiritual, indestructible selfhood in God.
Well, here we are nearly two thousand years later. So much has changed in the world and continues to change, at an almost breathless pace. But what Christ Jesus taught and exemplified hasn't become outdated or dull. Christ, Truth, is as freshly relevant to our lives today as it was to the lives of people in Jesus' day. It is still a healing power.
Through the centuries, though, mortal opinions have buried the primary truth Jesus proved and on which his healing works were based: that God's man is spiritual and sinless. As a result, the thing that gave unique vitality and life to Christianity was eclipsed. Healing largely disappeared from the Church.
But the good news is that Christian healing is happening again. Christian Science, bringing the Comforter Jesus promised, is here with us. It is here to teach us everything we need to know to heal the sick through God; it is here to remind us of the things the great Teacher said. What he lived for has not been lost, after all.
"Mystery does not enshroud Christ's teachings, and they are not theoretical and fragmentary, but practical and complete," writes Mrs. Eddy, the Discoverer of the Christ Science; "and being practical and complete, they are not deprived of their essential vitality." Science and Health, p. 98
This means it's actually possible for us to recapture the original vision of life in Spirit and to experience, in our individual lives and in our churches, the kind of vigor characteristic of early Christianity. But to sustain that vigor takes wholehearted fidelity to the vision.
When people first take up the study and practice of Christian Science, they usually find it has an invigorating effect on their lives. Their hope and faith in God often undergo a kind of resurrection. Learning that man is Godlike and steadily proving this truth through healing are an exhilarating spiritual adventure.
Sometimes, though, something seems to happen to that feeling of adventure. Maybe our zest for deep study or prayer has waned. Our thoughts wander a lot in church. Or we don't feel like going to church in the first place. Maybe other things seem a lot more interesting than healing and spirituality. And healing, for that matter, doesn't come so easily anymore. Longing for the "good old days" when we were inspired, we try to figure out where we went wrong.
Clearly, the problem isn't with the teachings. Truth doesn't change or become less effective with the passage of time. Still, it would be a mistake for anyone to conclude under such circumstances that he personally doesn't "have what it takes." A loss of momentum in our demonstration of divine Science is never a matter of personal inadequacy as such. What lies behind a flagging spirit in individuals or churches is always the undetected, unresisted influence of the anti-Christ on individual thought.
St. Paul called this suppositious influence the carnal mind, hatred of God. It's the opposition of materialism to the fact that, as Jesus himself said, "It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing." John 6:63 Christian Science calls this mental opposition "animal magnetism."
This ancient enemy of Truth loathes the appearance of the Science of Christ in this age as it detested the advent of Jesus, for this appearance means the exposure and demise of the lie of life in matter. Seeking to escape its own doom, this illusory mind would engage our cooperation in opposing, directly or indirectly, the Science that reveals God to be the only Life. After all, to perpetuate a lie and get away with it, a liar needs a believer.
Before we go any further, let's consider a few basic points of Christian Science that arm us to deal with evil and malice. First, God is All-in-all. He is good, and He is the one and only power. He is also the only presence and the only Mind. This means, in Christian Science, that evil is nothing; it is unreal. It has neither the intelligence, law, nor might with which to defeat God and His Christ. Evil exists in human belief only and depends upon our believing in it in order to seem real and powerful. So when we talk about "handling" animal magnetism, we're not talking about fending off some mysterious, powerful force. What we mean is reducing to nothing in our own thought the belief in evil as real and attractive.
Animal magnetism is deception, and it operates through deception—mesmeric deception. To accomplish its ends, it would first seek to capture our attention through intimidation or enticement. Through silent mental suggestion, it would undermine us by suggesting that we feel apathetic or lustful, afraid or uncertain, that we cannot heal or do not want to. Such tendencies are foreign to our true spiritual identity, and so we can, with divine authority, always refuse to admit them into thought as our thought. We have a choice. But if we are unwary and accept them as our own, the tempter would then persuade us to weaken ourselves morally, fall asleep mentally, compromise our stand for spiritual healing—and thus drag us down for one purpose only: to keep the healing light of Christ, Truth, hidden from humanity.
The malicious whisperings of animal magnetism are often undetected because they subtly disguise themselves as our own thinking. They are unresisted when we lose sight of the fact that the carnal mind's wicked efforts are always directed against the "babe" of Christian healing, as Mrs. Eddy calls it (see Miscellaneous Writings 370:4-18), not against us personally. When we recognize the specific criminal intent, however, we can then see more than ever the necessity of watching the trend of our thoughts and obeying only God's directives. After all, who would want to be an accomplice, through neglect or otherwise, to a crime against the Holy Ghost?—the worst of all crimes, Jesus said. And who would not want to have an active role in keeping the light of Christ's teachings shining in the world by guarding the purity and spirituality of one's thought and life? Humanity desperately needs to know that there is light and hope, that there is life that cannot die, innocence that can't be lost, health that can't be undermined.
Knowing that God is omnipotent and ever present, we can overcome fear of evil. But that doesn't mean we ignore its claims. Our demonstrated immunity from evil comes as we accept responsibility for detecting and resisting its suggestions.
There was great vitality and commitment among the
first Christians. They were alive with the Christ-spirit
because they'd caught hold of a wholly new view
of life.
Its very first suggestion, the one upon which all others are based, is that there are many minds. So the beginning point of our mental defense is always the scientific fact that God, good, is the only Mind, and that evil is not mind. Consistently identifying ourselves in thought and deed with the Mind that is Love, while remaining alert to the devious methods of the carnal mind, successfully frustrates evil's efforts.
There are various ways in which materiality would suffocate the healing vitality of the Cause of Christian Science. One is to keep the key to our Master's works coffined in an overemphasis on the letter. Here the attempt is to separate Christianity from Science by keeping us so busy studying and straining at the letter that it becomes a merely scholastic, rather than an inspirational, pursuit. Our intentions may be good, but our efforts can turn out to be pretty technical. In other words, our work has no heart.
An intellectual grasp of Science, without the vitalizing spirit, cannot bring healing. But the law of Love, written on the heart, can move mountains. St. Paul put it simply, "The letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life." II Cor. 3:6
This is not to say that systematic study and disciplined research are not important to the student's spiritual progress; they are, in fact, indispensable. But we might bear in mind that it's a lot easier to read and talk about Truth than it is to actually change. So if we find this has been our tendency, that we've studied a lot of metaphysics but haven't found the healing we need, maybe it's time to take one foundational metaphysical truth appropriate to the case and really live it, practice it, let it make us new. Then, as we prayerfully pursue our work at Mind's directing, what we are led to study will more precisely match the needs of each moment and come to fruition in healing.
At the opposite extreme is another danger. It's a more subtle form of materialism—the substitution of outward appearance for the true Christ-spirit within. The energizing spirit of Christ's church is not a matter of human enthusiasm, emotion, sociability, a sunny outlook. It goes far deeper than the plastic of appearances. This spirit is born of Gethsemane-like surrender to God; of lonely, hard-won battles with self; of courageous stands taken for Spirit's healing power; of quiet, unapplauded self-sacrifice for others and the Cause of Christ. In short, a genuine spirited quality springs only from wholehearted commitment to Christ. And this includes the maturity that recognizes Christian Science isn't here to make the dream of mortal existence pleasant. It's here to wake us up to spiritual reality—to the wonderful truth that man is purely spiritual, coexistent with God and entirely apart from the flesh.
Worldly pressure to conform to prevailing materialistic standards would have us try to fit spirituality into the context of a mortal sense of existence instead of making spirituality the very center of our lives. Such pressure would keep us so busy humanly that we scrape by on a minimum of study and neglect to pray for ourselves daily and obey our Leader's instructions (see Manual of The Mother Church by Mrs. Eddy, Art. VIII, Sect. 6, and Science and Health 442:30-32). It would even have us qualify our trust in God's healing power, relying on Him only so long as this doesn't demand too much of us or interfere with the ordinary, everyday sense of things.
But we really can't afford to try to accommodate the things of God to our lives on a kind of salvation-as-convenient basis. Not if we would practice spiritual healing for ourselves and our families (not to mention others) on a consistent basis.
In fact, as we grow in our commitment to Christ, we find we actually welcome those occasions that demand a shaking up of conventional views and establish us in the newness of the Life that is God. We become grateful for every cross that teaches us to love more fully, for every difficulty that compels us to grow meek and trusting, for everything that helps us to walk more closely with God and understand Him better. Such discipleship—along with the struggle that usually precedes our yielding to it—is an essential element of a truly vigorous Christian spirit in individuals and churches. It keeps the door wide open to healing and progress.
But suppose, as you're reading this, you're feeling that it's too late, that you've fallen for some of the carnal mind's suggestions and have lost the Christ-spirit altogether. Or that you never really had it to begin with. It's not too late. Actually, the Christ is never far away; it's right within your consciousness, ready to be resurrected in your life. Because of this, you can heal and be healed. In reality, God's man cannot be deprived of his essential vitality, any more than Christ's teachings or his church can be deprived of theirs. Man's true spirit is the brilliant reflection of Soul, God, and we can always claim it. We are free to realize this, disbelieve the lies that would clog progress, and make a fresh start, rededicating ourselves to following the Master.
Students of Christian Science have accepted a sacred trust on behalf of humanity—to keep Christ's teachings bright before the world through the Christian, healing quality of their lives. It's work that requires our whole heart. And divine Love, having bestowed this trust, also supplies the wisdom, courage, and grace we need to remain faithful to it.
