God is good and upright. He is perfect Mind, which forms the universe, including man. His work is flawless and true. God, Spirit, makes man in His own image, to express His wisdom, grace, and harmony. Man, the image of God, reflects the perfection of God.
God is All-in-all. There is nothing, then, to undermine His creation or twist man into another form. Science and Health by Mary Baker Eddy says, "The great truth in the Science of being, that the real man was, is, and ever shall be perfect, is incontrovertible; for if man is the image, reflection, of God, he is neither inverted nor subverted, but upright and Godlike."Science and Health, p. 200.
Material sense, the false belief that mind is in matter, cannot know the true form of man in divine Science. Material sense perceives only error. It is blindness—an obscured, distorted sense of God's creation. The forms delineated by material sense, by the so-called carnal, mortal mind, are counterfeits of the spiritual forms of divine Mind. They are the illusive forms of error, not the substantial forms of Truth. Science and Health states, "Mortal thought transmits its own images, and forms its offspring after human illusions."Ibid., p. 259.
Physical deformity is not really physical, as it appears to be; it is a mental misconception, a human illusion. At its root, deformity is the belief that man is formed by matter rather than by Spirit, and that he's governed by mortal mind, by physical sensation, rather than by the divine Mind. We see this belief expressed in moral and physical imperfections. Yet false, material beliefs can be changed. They can yield to a spiritual understanding of God and man and to the healing power of divine Truth; then the crooked becomes straight. In Isaiah we read this promise: "The crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain: and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together."Isa. 40:4, 5.
Christ, the spiritual idea of God, which Jesus represented, reveals the glory of God to the world. This spiritual light of Truth, expressing infinite good, eliminates the dark forms of mortal thought manifested in sin, disease, deformity, suffering, and decline. Then we see man more as God made him—whole and perfect. Jesus demonstrated the Christ-power through his healing works. For example, he restored a man's withered hand to wholeness and made straight a woman "bowed together" for eighteen years.See Matt. 12:10–13; Luke 13:11–13.
Christ doesn't make the real man, God's image, straight. God's man hasn't lost his perfect form. Christ, Truth, reforms mortals' imperfect sense of man.
St. Paul wrote, "Be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God."Rom. 12:2. The New Testament in Modern English by J. B. Phillips translates this passage: "Don't let the world around you squeeze you into its own mould, but let God re-make you so that your whole attitude of mind is changed. Thus you will prove in practice that the will of God is good, acceptable to him and perfect." The world, sensual belief, materiality, would squeeze us into its supposed likeness. As we resist this pressure and respond instead to the call of Truth to come out from the world and be separate,See II Cor. 6:17. as we let God govern our thoughts and actions, we're transformed by His Christ. The Christ changes thought in form (from belief to understanding), nature (from sickness and sin to health and sinlessness), and function (from selfishness to unselfishness). This spiritualization of thought brings full healing.
This Science is the law of God, which transforms mortal mind and body through the power of Spirit. Science and Health states, "Correct material belief by spiritual understanding, and Spirit will form you anew."Science and Health, p. 425.
I was born with crooked feet. They turned in, not in the minor degree considered normal, but in a pronounced way, especially one leg. This problem was not serious, for I participated in most activities and managed to keep my feet relatively straight in appearance. Still, there was discomfort when I walked or ran.
I prayed from time to time for healing. During a period of many years, I learned how to do a better job of correcting material belief with spiritual understanding. Gradually transformation took place. I grew spiritually, had many physical healings, and expressed more wisdom and moral courage. My activities became less self-centered. There was also some easing of the problem with my feet.
At one point a friend mentioned to me that I should overcome pessimism—a temptation to expect the worst possible outcome. This comment surprised me, but I recognized that pessimism did sometimes tempt me. I knew that that state of thought is another kind of crookedness. It twists thought away from our natural hope and faith in good, upholds the false thought that evil is powerful, and so perverts the practice of Christian Science.
Straight, right, and true thought, which originates in Spirit, knows that good always triumphs. Such expectancy isn't mere human optimism that ignores evil, nor is it simply positive thinking. It expresses the spiritual understanding that evil is powerless because God, good, is all-powerful and there is no power besides Him.
Pessimism is one aspect of material resistance to the supremacy of God, good, and to the transforming activity of Christ. It is not the nature of man to be pessimistic. Animal magnetism, or mortal mind, would have us believe we are by nature pessimistic or that there is a valid reason for being negative. This assertion that evil has power and presence is a lie, an imposition, having no mind, truth, or authority. I rejected each suggestion of pessimism and held instead to the fact of the all-power and all-presence of good until the cloud—the denial of the supreme power of God, good—lifted from my thought.
Spirit was forming me anew. I felt a growing freedom and strength in what I did. I hadn't solved all of life's problems, but I had planted my feet a little more firmly in the way of Christ. Even today I feel this is a journey that I have only begun—one well worth the effort.
One Sunday when I took a walk, I began wishing I lived in a home like the ones I was passing, and I was unhappy because that didn't seem possible. Since I had undertaken to watch for evil suggestions in order to resist them, I woke up to the imposition of worldly thoughts of envy and hopelessness. I stopped in my tracks—stopped that track of thought.
I stopped looking for life and happiness in material sense, reminded myself that God, Spirit, is the only source of joy, and began looking to Science. I realized that God made all, made it spiritual and good, and loves all that He made. He loved the people who lived in those homes and He loved me too; He was good to them and He was good to me too. These were the spiritual facts. Good, the outcome of God, Life and Love, is always present and always infinite. No one is ever deprived. Each is completely fulfilled as God's expression. I refused to entertain any thought to the contrary. I felt a deep confidence that universal, spiritual good was the only reality. I walked on with great joy.
The next day I took another walk. I was happy and at peace. As I rounded the corner at the end of the block, I felt as if I were walking on air. At that point in the walk I had always felt physical strain and discomfort. Now it was gone. I was walking with full freedom. My feet were straight.
I was tempted to think of my healing in terms of physical change and sensation. Sometimes the physical sense of comfort in my leg pleased me. Healing is a time of great joy, but if we focus on the physical sensation we believe to be health, we lose health. Health exists in Mind, not in matter or material sensation. At other times a strong sense of my foot still being twisted frightened me, although when I looked at it, it was in a normal position.
This attraction of thought to good or bad physical sensation, or to any other mortal belief, is a false attraction. While it's normal and appropriate—and our divine right—to express harmony and wholeness, it's important not to rivet thought on pictures of either physical health or disease, abundance or poverty. Such a tendency would hold us subject to matter, to disease and sin. Mortal thought, denying God, would squeeze us into its own mold.
I reminded myself that when I had turned my thought away from material sense to Spirit, Spirit had healed me. The consciousness of Truth, not of error, freed me from deformity. I must continue in this right path of thought and not be pulled back into looking at material sense testimony about myself to determine whether I was well or not. I was well, perfect, because God made man perfect. I continued to hold to a spiritual understanding of being, and the false sense of things disappeared. This healing has brought freedom of movement and progress to all areas of my life.
God is the only creator. Immortal Mind forms man straight, right, and true. Material belief would squeeze us into the likeness of its own deformed model of man, counterfeiting the spiritual forms of Truth. We can resist this evil and respond instead to the Christ, the transforming activity of Truth. As we correct mistaken belief with spiritual understanding, Spirit forms us anew, and we see evidence of what is eternally true—man made in the perfect likeness of God.
