My grandfather and I once had a discussion about the circumstances of a healing by Mary Baker Eddy (the healing of a young boy with a club foot sitting on the beach). My grandfather maintained that Mary Baker Eddy did not heal that child, but that God did. I asked my grandfather if the boy would have been healed if Mary Baker Eddy had not happened to stroll by that day. My grandfather laughed and said I brought up an interesting point.
Why is it, when God's love is always present in abundance, that a deep spiritual understanding of at least one individual is required in order for a healing to occur?
A1 Your statement that God's love is always present in abundance is the absolute truth of being; God's loving care for all guarantees uninterrupted health and freedom. Divine Love would never let anything bad happen to Her children, so, from the standpoint of this absolute spiritual truth, there is nothing to be healed.
When someone is ill, the difficulty is never really physical, although it seems that way to the physical senses. Rather, the illness is actually a misconception about what God has already created perfectly and is forever maintaining. What exists right here and now is God's perfect spiritual creation. What we see, however, depends on our thought, on what we understand about spiritual substance and being. When there is a need for healing, the demand is for a change of thought from a material, limited, and limiting basis to the only reality: spiritual existence. In Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, Mary Baker Eddy explained, "It is our ignorance of God, the divine Principle, which produces apparent discord, and the right understanding of Him restores harmony" (p. 390).
Jesus came to tell us—and to demonstrate through healing—the truth about God and His cared for, perfect creation. The Christ or Truth that he so fully embodied is always active, just as God's love is always present and active. When this Truth was understood and declared in Jesus' time, it healed. It also healed in Mary Baker Eddy's day, and it heals today.
One might say that the requirement you speak of for spiritual understanding on the part of at least one individual is really a requirement for this Christ message from God to be active in thought. When the Christ is present, healing will come about through our own prayer or through the prayer of another on our behalf. The acknowledgement that God's spiritual creation, including man, is perfect now, does two things: It brings thought into line with what God revealed to us through Jesus, and at the same time, it removes from thought the ignorance or error that is the cause of disease. The natural result of this inspired prayer brings healing to both thought and body.
VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA, CANADA
A2 Christian Science teaches that God loves us, that we are the children of perfect unconditional Love (God). God does not have favorites. When Jesus healed, he healed many people, but he did not, for example, heal all those waiting to be healed at the pool of Bethesda (see John 5:2-9). It was Jesus' deep spiritual awareness of how God is the very life and integrity of man that healed so many individuals. To me, it is like a candle being introduced into a pitch-dark room. The light can't help but illumine the surroundings. In the same way, one individual with deep spiritual understanding is like this candlelight. Spiritual truth exposes the unreality of evil and expels any darkness in our lives.
Jesus showed through his healing ministry the evidence of Love in operation in people's lives, but he did not exempt any one of us from finding that evidence on our own. From Jesus' example, we can see that through the qualities we can express from God, such as love, poise, balance, vitality, patience, joy, and creativity, everyone has the ability and the freedom to find Love demonstrated in their lives.
Our confidence in seeing evidence of this unconditional Love (healing) comes from the fact that we already live and move and have our being in God, in the sustaining infinite.
We have eternity to commune with God. Physical healing is important and impressive, but what should really awe us are the divine, universal laws behind the healing. The greater work for each one of us is to see these laws as God's presence and influence in our lives and in our world, eradicating every human limitation and conflict, including war, poverty, and sin. Every consecrated desire to feel divine Love and to see its proof is a prayer that moves us closer to God and healing.
The good news is that we are always beloved and whole, spiritually intact, perfect, without needing to prove anything. This doesn't take a special or advanced understanding—but simply trusting that we are never separated from our source, divine Love.
TOKYO, JAPAN
A3 There are three ways that healing takes place, as I see it. 1) God's love touches and moves the receptive heart. 2) Another person's spiritual understanding and goodness removes our fear/illness and clears the way for our healing. 3) Our own spiritual understanding or receptivity to God erases the fear/illness.
Mary Baker Eddy wrote, "... the human mind alone suffers, is sick, and ... the divine Mind [God] alone heals" (Science and Health, p. 270).
She also explained: "Our Master cast out devils (evils) and healed the sick. It should be said of his followers also, that they cast fear and all evil out of themselves and others and heal the sick. God will heal the sick through man, whenever man is governed by God" (pp. 494–495).
Just as an artist expresses him or herself, God reveals His own harmony and goodness. God's expression—God's image and likeness, as the Bible states—is man. God and His individual expression are one. An awareness of our unity with God enables us to express more and more His/Her healing power.
Mary Baker Eddy's healing ability was marvelous yet natural because of her obedience to God. She wrote, "I healed consumption in its last stages ... I healed malignant diphtheria and carious bones ... I have healed at one visit a cancer ... I have physically restored sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf, speech to the dumb, and have made the lame walk" (The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, p. 105).
With a checkbook mistake, we do not expect God to fix it. We correct it by applying the laws of mathematics—although we express God's wisdom and ability to do so. Just so—as Christian Science shows that every physical trouble is an imposition on thought, which is then made manifest on the body—we can apply the laws of God by using our God-given spiritual understanding to replace the wrong (the illness) with the understanding of true, divine substance—health, freedom, balance, and strength. In this way, we can heal ourselves and others.
CORPUS CHRISTI, TEXAS, US
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