What is happening when a Christian Science practitioner is asked for help through prayer? Is somebody with a holy thought causing something to happen for somebody with a not-so-holy thought? Such a concept would put Christian Science treatment on a personal basis, even perhaps implying that from time to time we need an intermediary to gain access to God. That belief would deny the office and mission of the Christ, the divine healing influence in human consciousness.
Each of us has an unbreakable relation to God and can therefore experience His help directly. Mary Baker Eddy points to this fact when she writes in the Christian Science textbook, Science and Health, "In divine Science, where prayers are mental, all may avail themselves of God as 'a very present help in trouble.'" Science and Health, pp. 12-13. But she also writes at another point in the book: "If students do not readily heal themselves, they should early call an experienced Christian Scientist to aid them. If they are unwilling to do this for themselves, they need only to know that error cannot produce this unnatural reluctance." Ibid., p. 420.
To reason correctly on this subject, we need to start with what God is doing, rather than with what we perceive a person to be doing. An account in the tenth chapter of Acts might be helpful in explaining this.
