SERVICE DRIVEN

You could say that Timothy MacDonald's initial thoughts of service were launched with his 13-year stint as a United States Navy officer, begun during the Vietnam conflict. He has since served the public as a Christian Science practitioner and teacher for many years, plus a three-year term as First Reader of The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston. But even during his time in the Navy, Tim says his concept of service was expanding outward and upward—from serving others in an honorable mission to serving God. "As I grew in my understanding of God, I knew that I had to put God first, and that there could not be an intermediary between God and myself—that I also had to honor.

"As I began to understand that more deeply," Tim says, "it came time to resign from the Navy, and I had an interim position with a small corporation here in Washington, DC, for about six months. That step basically sealed the feeling that I needed to put God first. I knew I needed to spend all of my moments finding the truth about God and His creation. The public practice of Christian Science was the only way I knew that would allow me to do that. So I took Christian Science class instruction,  ^{A 12-lesson course about God and His creation that includes instruction on spiritual healing utilizing this understanding .} and immediately went into the practice at the end of class.

"More and more, I began to realize that the appearance of the practice, and eventually of people asking for help through the practice, was an effect — that I still thirsted after an understanding of God. The more that understanding of God dawned upon me, the more there were calls asking for help with many of the very same things that were being healed within me as I grew to understand my spiritual identity."

Sometimes there doesn't seem to be much distance between the concept of service and that of sacrifice. Is serving as a practitioner a sacrifice?

As a Christian Science practitioner, it's not that I have a mind of my own, making a decision about what needs to be sacrificed, as much as it's inevitable that that which is not true, and therefore not real, falls away as I grow in my understanding of what is real. It's not so much something I do as much as it's a product of that growing understanding of God and His creation.

In Mark's Gospel, Jesus says, "These signs shall follow them that believe." He leaves no doubt about what form those signs would take—casting out devils, speaking "with new tongues"—and then he says, "They shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover."  ^{Mark 16:17, 18.} What does his statement say to you about what acutally does the healing?

If healing follows as effect, then what's required is an understanding of the reality of Life, Truth, and Love, which we understand to be synonyms of God. The very presence of that Life, Truth, and Love in thought, then, does the work of precluding anything unlike themselves from existing. And out of that comes the human appearance of what we call healing. In all honesty, I wouldn't know how to change a broken arm into a whole arm, or to get rid of cancer or a tumor. But I've also come to realize that's something I don't need to know—because what we know as healing is the prerogative of Truth itself and its very presence, precluding anything unlike itself from existing. It is not changing something bad into something good, but it's actually Truth precluding that which is not of God from having existence. As we become more and more aware of Truth, that clear understanding of Truth has its human appearance in the falling away of sickness, disease, sin, and, at some point, even death, as Jesus proved.

In several places the Bible says Jesus was "moved with compassion"—for example, toward the sick, and toward a woman whose son was about to be buried.  ^{See Matt, 14:14 and Luke 7:13.} What is the Christly kind of compassion, and how does it bring about health?

I think of the love that Jesus exhibited and exemplified as a love that left no one out. That no matter what the material picture before him, he saw only as his Father-Mother saw, and that had to be in the context of love humanly taking the appearance of compassion. That love is the ultimate healer. It's probably the most tangible connection that we see right now between where we are in our growing understanding of God, and the total understanding that will be there in us, as Jesus showed when he ascended, or Elijah when he was translated.  ^{See Acts 1:9 and II Kings 2:11 .} And without it there can be no healing, because love conveys healing. If we don't love, then there's nothing to convey the understanding of God that is palpable and heartfelt. I have to remember this when I'm praying for myself — that I have to love myself. Otherwise, there's absolutely no way I can see more clearly the truth of who and what I am, and the human appearance of healing that accompanies that truth.

It's a love, also, that many of us are reluctant to acknowledge and to live, because we're afraid of what might happen. Quite often, we're afraid that if we love, someone will take advantage of us, or they will get the upper hand, and, therefore, we're afraid to love, because we're afraid we'll become a victim somehow. Whereas, the love that Jesus exemplified was so powerful that even when a band of men and officers came to arrest him in Gethsemane, and they found out who he was, the book of John tells us, "They went backward, and fell to the ground."  ^{John 18:6.} They couldn't possibly have arrested him or taken him unless he had given his permission. That is the love that we need to begin exemplifying and manifesting, without any fear. Out of such love will come the greater healing works that an understanding of God is capable of.

You wrote at one time, I believe in the Journal, about how the discords that appear in one's life are the result of an ignorance of Love, of Life as divine. Is that what the Christ does—removes ignorance and enlightens?

It does. Actually, since we start out spiritually, we don't go through stages to become perfect, to become God's children. If anything, we drop the ignorance of who and what we already are, and as the Bible tells us with respect to the promised Comforter, it brings to remembrance all things.  ^{See John 14:26 .} God didn't create us 99 percent perfect and then say, you'll get the other 1 percent through experience. We are totally perfect, and that Christly understanding brings to remembrance who and what we already are, as ignorance fades into its nothingness.

Is there a difference, Tim, between the Christly compassion that we've been talking about and sympathy?

I think so. Sympathy, on the one hand, tends to draw one into the very ignorance that needs to be replaced, and we begin to view things from the viewpoint of the ignorance—the problem seems real, the inevitability of some negative outcome seems real. Because we now seem to be working from within the problem, it's difficult to get outside of it to find the answer that replaces it, that precludes it from existing. Compassion, on the other hand, sees a need out of love, and works from outside the problem, from outside of ignorance, to provide the answer. It never deviates from or separates itself from the answer. It loves enough to do that. It's much like a parent with a child who's having a nightmare. No matter how real the nightmare may appear to the child, the parent knows that they can't get into the child's thought and fight the dragon and try to save the child. Instead, they work from their awakened state outside the nightmare. Through love and gentleness they awaken the child to reality.

Could you comment on mental malpractice—how does the healer defeat it?

If, out of fear, we fail to be obedient to where we are being led in our understanding of Life, Truth, Love, Mind, Soul, Principle, Spirit—the wholeness of God—then we open the door to malpractice in one form or another. We've opened the door to holding on to the belief that there's a power and an existence apart from God that can either exist in addition to God or in place of God. And through that belief, then, we either become ignorant malpractitioners or, in some cases, malicious malpractitioners, knowing what we're doing. Either way, it's a product or an effect of simply disobeying or not being obedient to what we know to be true already.

Basically, malpractice is the thoughts of one person controlling another person's thinking for reasons of ignorance or maliciousness. For example, it's ignorant malpractice when someone, through advertising, creates a desire on another's part for a product, when that person had no intention of needing that product. Someone has now intruded into that person's thought, and subtly created a need or a desire where there wasn't one before. The person who is creating the advertisement doesn't have the purpose of hurting the other person, but the outcome is a form of hurt, because in effect, the individual has been encouraged to give up their own reasoning, and their own obedience to what they feel is right.

Malicious malpractice is influence that is meant to hurt someone. All you have to do is pick up any newspaper and you can see the effect of malicious malpractice—killing, terrorism, blackmail, threats of various kinds, where the individual doing the malpracticing knows what they're doing and is doing it purposefully to hurt someone. A third type of malpractice would be practicing metaphysics incorrectly, where one has gone beyond where their understanding of God is, claiming to be able to do something that they don't yet understand.

The effective defense for all forms of malpractice is being so filled with the truth of being—the truth of one's relationship to God, and God's presence—that it precludes ignorance and maliciousness from having any effect.

Wouldn't it be the Christ-impelled remembrance you mentioned earlier that delivers one from any of those forms of malpractice?

Absolutely. One of the beautiful things I'm growing to understand— and I think I've probably just touched the tip of the iceberg—is the practicality of this growing understanding of reality, of God and His creation. It's not something that's going to be real just in the hereafter somewhere, wherever that's supposed to be. But since it's a law—reality acting as law—it's true right here, right now. Therefore, there is no form of ignorance that can survive truth, no form of ignorance that can fight back or resist its own nothingness. That's why the healing of all material conditions is inevitable. It can't be stopped from happening, whether it's in the form of sickness, disease, sin, or even death. We don't go beyond our understanding day by day in demonstrating this, but we at least know the path we're on and what the ultimate result of following that path is going to be.

What were some of the challenges that you faced early in your practice?

While some of them appeared to be frightening to begin with, especially paying our bills, I knew that if God is everything we're taught that He is, then the ability to demonstrate His allness and goodness had to be there. I knew that God would not require obedience to Himself without providing the means by which to be obedient. That just wouldn't be loving. So if obedience to Love, for instance, meant that we would be properly housed, clothed, and fed, then the means by which to demonstrate housing, clothing, and food had to be there, and it was simply a matter then of doing it.

That thought began to expand into the various cases that would come to me. If I truly am God's child, then there would never be a moment when I would be better prepared, out of love, to help someone. Because all the practice is, is love. Somebody needs to be loved because the world is telling them they're trapped in a problem. So the two—love and practice—come together, and whatever the problem may be, it can be dissolved, because while ignorant reasoning would say there are degrees of problems, in reality, ignorance is still just ignorance. It doesn't matter whether you've got a one-digit difference in an answer to a math problem, or a six-digit difference that makes it incorrect. Both of them yield to the same laws of mathematics, and just as readily.

The two things that seem to combine in your practice, Tim, are logic and love, and those two terms appear to represent Science and Christ. Is that fact consciously in your thought as you conduct your practice?

I think it's always there. I often share with individuals who are sincere in their growing understanding of God that the practice is an inevitable part of the working out of their own salvation—of going from wherever they happen to be now to the point that Jesus was when he ascended, or Elijah when he was translated. The practice will be an inevitable part of that salvation. It is the result of that Christly love that leaves no one out, and of the logic and the reasoning that take place, of which healing is then the effect.

So one answer to the question, why not enter the public practice of Christian Science, is essentially another question: why not be saved yourself?

Yes, because practice is based on a sincere desire to grow in one's understanding of reality and to put off mortality. It will become inevitable for anyone who's doing it. And it's not something that we need to be afraid of, any more than we need to be afraid of loving, because it's simply an aspect of that unselfish love that wouldn't allow us to keep something to ourselves. It has to be shared.

Any further thoughts for those who may be considering making a commitment to the practice?

It's probably best not to try to become a practitioner, but instead to just want to grow in your understanding of God, and let the practice be the natural effect of that growth. If we can keep that relationship—that thirsting after an understanding of God—as our priority, then the practice will never devolve into a human activity or profession, but it will be constantly fresh and new, moment by moment, as it follows one's growing thirst for an understanding of God. Then practice doesn't become a goal, it becomes an effect.

Often people ask me why they aren't able to heal the way they did when they first found Christian Science, or discovered God for themselves. A great part of the answer to that concern is that they probably get to a point in their growing understanding of God where the demands of going further are frightening to them, because it means giving up the more entrenched aspects of mortality—which would include a mortal view of one's own identity, family, purpose, and reputation. They're afraid of doing that because they don't yet trust the spiritual enough to yield to spiritual reality. Then they almost consciously give their permission to stop growing spiritually. Since healing is the inevitable effect of one's growing understanding of God, then healing also begins to stop. So if we can keep seeing the practice in terms of just constantly wanting to grow in our understanding of God without fear of where that's going to take us, the practice and healing will follow beautifully.