Through the study of Christian Science, we learn that every disturbing physical, emotional, or personal problem can be rectified and healed through a surrender to metaphysical facts. The Christian Science textbook, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mrs. Eddy, states, "The effect of this Science is to stir the human mind to a change of base, on which it may yield to the harmony of the divine Mind." Science and Health, p. 162. Nothing good is destroyed when healing takes place. Rather, the human mind is yielding to the harmony of the divine Mind, and individually we are seeing a bit more of God's kingdom come on earth.
This kind of yielding is essential to bring healing to the challenges confronting a church as well as in our own lives. It may sometimes be helpful to ask ourselves, "What am I seeing that God isn't seeing?" Since He is the only genuine cause, and creation is His perfect spiritual effect, is what I am seeing legitimate from the absolute standpoint of Christian Science? The need is not to ignore what may need correcting but to listen to the truth that God is imparting; to cultivate an even deeper love for God; to be willing to surrender to what pure Mind is knowing.
I'd like to share an experience I had in which I caught a glimpse of where a problem actually lay and how to heal it. Like many fellow members, I've been troubled in recent years by what I've occasionally heard about my Church. I know, however, that to become embroiled in quarreling or to indulge in gossip would not contribute to a healing. So each time troubling suggestions came, I turned in prayer to God and attempted to understand more fully His infinite and perfect control. But I still felt unsettled. Unconsciously, I was thinking in terms of blame instead of strengthening my own ability to see how God was working out His purpose.
Oh, I was very careful to do good praying in support of Church every day, and to deal with the specific arguments that came to the door of my thought. But I didn't recognize that all the way along I was cherishing mortal opinions on whether certain decisions were right or wrong.
Of course, the need was not to escape my obligations as a church member to think for myself. No one can afford just to follow blindly. That's not what I'm saying. It is right for us to accept our spiritual intuitions and then deal with specific issues that come to our attention through scientifically Christian prayer. That kind of thinking leads to healing actions.
I wasn't really upset because of what others were doing. I was upset because I wasn't seeing man in Science, and God in complete control of the idea of Church.
While I had not been arguing with others about an array of human opinions, I certainly wasn't mentally parting with such controversy either. I prided myself on dealing with it through prayer, and yet I still clung to the false sense of a church filled with personalities and with little minds on different sides of issues. Suddenly I came down with severe symptoms of flu. A heavy cough developed, and it didn't yield to treatment. The condition persisted for over a month. I had dedicated help from a Christian Science practitioner, but the cough deepened. I really hadn't been dealing scientifically through prayer with negative elements of thought I had been harboring. Consequently, very little regeneration was going on in my consciousness. Mrs. Eddy says of regeneration, "It is the appearing of divine law to human understanding; the spiritualization that comes from spiritual sense in contradistinction to the testimony of the so-called material senses." Miscellaneous Writings, p. 73.
Then one night I had a truly spiritual encounter with the divine healing influence, or Christ. As I look back on it now, I think of Paul's encounter when he was on the road to Damascus. When he came face to face with the Christ, his eyes were opened, and he saw things in an entirely different way.
I woke about 2 a.m. I was filled with gratitude, for it was the first restful sleep I'd had in a month. I lay there, freed from the incessant coughing that had so racked my body. And then the Christ spoke, and the words "Put up thy sword ..." John 18:11. cut across my thought with imperative authority.
At that point, something came vividly to me. I realized that on that eventful night in the garden of Gethsemane, when the soldiers came to take Christ Jesus away, one of his disciples had drawn his sword and cut off a soldier's ear. But Jesus' rebuke was instant. Why? It was suddenly so clear to me that the disciple was stooping to the world's ways to support his Master. Jesus knew that only one way would provide the ultimate solution to the deep and conflicting currents of thought, and that way was through the spiritual power of God—through depending entirely on the power of prayer and on man's oneness with the Father. And I saw that I had been caught up in the world's ways when I looked to human opinion.
Here was a sword that I didn't realize I had drawn! I had allowed my thoughts to be placed in a position of conflict instead of healing. Then the light of Truth came with such power as to expose the whole impression of a material church full of material personalities with separate minds making wise or unwise decisions or being in conflict over such choices. In contrast, I saw the blessed presence and power of the Christ to heal.
I must trust the power of God to reveal Church in its original purity as an idea in Mind, governed and controlled by Mind.
It became clear that if I trusted the Manual of The Mother Church, and thereby Mrs. Eddy's continuing leadership, I must trust the power of God, expressed in my own Christian Science treatment for Church, to help reveal how Church, in its original purity as an idea in Mind, is governed and controlled by Mind. I must also trust the form of government Mrs. Eddy established under God's direction. Such trust is, of course, active, not passive. It requires of us active, continuous prayer on a scientific basis.
Like St. Paul, I was totally overwhelmed by the brilliance of what was, to me, real revelation, and by the firsthand glance at my own need to grow, to be transformed. And like Paul, who was washed clean of his arrogant thinking, I came through this testing time purified and blessed. As this divine light swept clean those hidden recesses, the love of infinite Love swept over my thought, and I saw each member of our Church secure in God's outstretched hands, each member pure and perfect. I saw one Ego, God, expressing Himself as the only Ego in my life and in the lives of my fellow church members.
This unfolding and purifying continued over several days, and I emerged from the whole experience completely at peace over my Church. I saw that needed answers regarding its activities would be supplied by relying on a loving God. I didn't merely change my human opinions; I completely surrendered them to Mind's directives. It was a Christian Science healing, where the human mind yielded to the harmony of the divine Mind, and I caught a bright glimpse of God's kingdom come on earth.
We can contribute best to the guidance of our Church through our united prayers, through doing our own part each day in praying thoroughly to love and support this Church. Our prayers will have a powerful healing effect as we look beyond brick and mortar and discern the vastness of the spiritual idea of Church in all its purity and perfection.
