Years ago a friend and I were having a dialogue in which I was the student and she was very much the instructor. She was drilling me on the battle gear of a Christian, on the basic armor spoken of in the Bible.
I've long since forgotten the exact words of our conversation, but their character was something like this: "Put on the armor and what have you got?" she asked. "Helmet of salvation?" Check. "Breastplate of righteousness?" Check. "Sword of the Spirit?" Check.
She marched me through the complete New Testament wardrobe and made sure I was properly suited up. "Now, child, are you completely protected?"
Tentatively I answered, "Yes."
"No!" she thundered. "Your back, child. You've put nothing on your back."
Mentally I ran through the checklist: Loins girt about with truth. Feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace. The shield of faith. The Bible, in the passage under consideration that day, spoke of no armor for the back. "What of it?" I thought.
She left me little time to wonder but went on to explain that in facing the foe I'd always be safe. Only in turning my back or in running away would I be vulnerable.
Frankly, I'm not at all sure that was the intended message in the New Testament book of Ephesians (which is where the passage on Christian armor occurs), See Eph. 6:11–17 . but the counsel struck me as sound at the time, and it does today.
Are the Goliaths of our time still best met by modern Davids, not turning aside or hiding but running forth to meet them? If so, none needs a direct response more than the malice which, with Goliath-like lack of subtlety, would try to oppose the right to practice Christian healing.
How to face it? What's our response?
Straightaway, it's a Christian's task to see such hostility in impersonal terms. That is, to separate the malice, which really derives from the carnal mind, from the individual who appears to be acting it out. Once we've made that separation, though, what then? Ephesians says, "Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil." To stand. Not to turn our back or to run scared.
Through Christian Science, which highlights the relationship between one's thought and one's experience, I've come to understand this metaphorical armor as qualities of thought. To cultivate and entertain such thoughts in consciousness is to be battle-ready. To me, the sword of the Spirit, the breastplate of righteousness, and so forth, represent moral and spiritual characteristics bestowed on us by God Himself. They constitute our Christian armor.
To be metaphysically precise, Godlike qualities are not simply "added on" to man to keep him safe; they are integral to man's unthreatenable being as the likeness of God. They're included in our true spiritual nature. Claiming and utilizing them in thought bring them into play in our daily lives, fortifying our well-being. With the helmet of salvation and the shield of faith—with the conscious awareness of God's presence and protecting power—our safety will be more sure, and Christian healing less vulnerable to siege.
Like the armor, the "foe" is also best understood in terms of thought—an ungodlike state of thought. Hatred, jealousy, unprincipled compromise. They are among the suggestions to be guarded against.
And how better to guard than to be on the offensive rather than on just the defensive—to be moving forward, doing something positive and healing! Whenever we see human hatred—whether focused on the idea of Christian healing or simply aimed at us—we can go right to it.
But first we must remember to suit up in "the whole armour of God." Or, as the Apostle Paul writes in II Corinthians, we must be "clothed upon, that mortality might be swallowed up of life." II Cor. 5:4. When, in our prayers, we're clothed with the love we express from God, divine Love, hatred is "swallowed up," reduced to its original and only status—nothingness. What a wonderful healing activity that gives us!
Malice toward the idea of Christian healing and toward those who practice it seems particularly sharp right now. Christ Jesus was talking to those engaged in Christian healing when he said, "If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you." John 15:18. But he went on to promise, "Be of good cheer; I have overcome the world." John 16:33.
Be of good cheer! The enmity—if we don't harbor it or, worse, return it in kind—pummels itself. All the more reason to love. Following our Master's lead, we'll find the only real impact enmity can have is to purify and refine our love.
Error, a term used by Mrs. Eddy to designate all sinful thinking and acting, has only one capacity, the capacity to destroy itself. Just as consciousness of truth provides the arsenal of facts needed to correct any error—such as a mathematical error—so the consciousness of Love provides the arsenal of spiritual qualities needed to extinguish malice. And malice is an "error" if there ever was one! It may not always be killed by human kindness, but it will always be canceled by divine Love. Hatred of Christ-healing calls forth from our consciousness of Love the exact spiritual facts—whether grace or forgiveness or whatever—needed for us to defang that error. Our job is to realize vividly the presence and power of Love and apply this spiritual fact to the need.
At a time when she and Christian Science were the focal point of considerable organized and very public criticism, Mrs. Eddy wrote, "... I do not regard this attack upon me as a trial, for when these things cease to bless they will cease to occur." The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, p. 143.
A Christian Scientist was struggling with bitter resentment. Evidently someone was jealous of the healing work he'd been engaged in. The individual stabbed him in the back, so to speak, spread a rumor about him that was without foundation. To the Scientist's own later regret, he was quick to nurse the resentment but not quick to face up to the error. The resentment built until it was a heavy weight. One day he collapsed on the floor.
Not the malice focused on him, but the resentment in his own thinking, was the burden that needed lifting. He was rescued by a fellow Christian Scientist who quoted from Mrs. Eddy's statement "Evil has no reality. It is neither person, place, nor thing, but is simply a belief, an illusion of material sense." Science and Health, p. 71.
With that fact in thought, the foe was confronted. Something deeper than the words was communicated. The malice was deprived of identity. The resentment dissolved. His body stopped trembling. His breathing became steady and natural. He got up from the floor completely well. And he has since been able to establish a warm and even relationship with the individual he felt had wronged him.
The "foe" is also best understood in terms of thought. Hatred, jealousy, unprincipled compromise. They are among the suggestions to be guarded against.
Although he didn't see it in these terms at the time, it was a fair illustration of putting on the armor, facing the foe, and swallowing up human hatred with love until there is no hatred left. He readily admits he was a better Christian at the end of the episode than he had been at the beginning.
Divine Love loves because that's its nature. It can do nothing less. As we glimpse something of man, of our true nature as the expression of Love, we find that we can do nothing less. And as our love is that which proceeds from divine Love, we find we are safe. The idea of Christian healing is sheltered. Human hatred is eclipsed.
In its second century, the early Christian Church continued to see dynamic healing and progress, as it had seen during its first burst of growth. But during that second century, persecution also flowered, and opposition became more entrenched. Writing on that period, one author notes: "Deep convictions instilled by witnessing physical healings enabled Christians to withstand the intermittent persecutions ordered by Roman emperors. ... And the church continued to grow." Frank C. Darling, Biblical Healing: Hebrew and Christian Roots (Boulder: Vista Publications, 1989), p. 97 . Is this in parallel to what the Christian Science movement faces during its second century?
Christian healing was central to discipleship then and remains so now. Persecution for such practice is also recurrent. But the early Christian Church was not crushed through persecution. It thrived. Its influence expanded. The real danger was not from persecution but from dilution, from becoming so watered down, so much a mixture with popular belief-systems of the time, that the original spark of Christian healing was all but lost for centuries.
If the modern attempt to oppose Christian healing is an overt threat from without, dilution is the covert threat from within. Nowhere is the Christian's armor, and the fact that God's qualities are inherent in our true nature, more needed. The radicalism of spiritual healing will always speak to receptive hearts and minds. But it will never be embraced by material-mindedness. If diluting pure, original Christianity made it more palatable to the carnal mind and bought wide cultural acceptance, this also neutralized its fundamental power to heal.
Perhaps the breastplate of righteousness, the helmet of salvation, belong to a wardrobe seemingly gone out of style. Perhaps turning one's back on religious oppression and following the crowd seem like "easy street" compared to staying the path that confronts the foe. Perhaps love seems drained of the power it had for early Christians.
Perhaps the world seems flat.
The stupendous healing power of Christlike love flows undiminished. What happened to early Christian healing does not have to repeat. Christ-healing remains a blessing prepared by the Father for all mankind. It needs to be cherished as such. The danger to those who've glimpsed Christian healing is not persecution from without but compromise from within. The idea of Christian healing is so radical, so wondrously unique, it deserves to be practiced and shared in all its original purity. Dimming its brilliance, diluting its potency, are of no advantage.
The New Testament wardrobe may never be in fashion. So what? The need is not to exchange it for a more chic garment but, rather, to cherish the inviolability of man's true nature. To see the real man as unthreatenable. To face and outface the malice. And to swallow up hatred of spiritual healing in a love so clear that the hatred is quenched and the idea of Christian healing moves forward.
Mankind will then be free to receive the pure blessing prepared for them by the Father.
Be thou strong and very courageous,
that thou mayest observe to do
according to all the law, which Moses my
servant commanded thee: turn not from it
to the right hand or to the left, that thou
mayest prosper whithersoever thou goest.
This book of the law shall not depart
out of thy mouth; but thou shalt
meditate therein day and night...
Have not I commanded thee?
Be strong and of a good courage;
be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed:
for the Lord thy God is with thee
whithersoever thou goest.
