I was introduced to Christian Science by dear friends after decades of belonging to another Christian denomination. Prior to turning to Christian Science, I had severe health problems for which I sought medical treatment. As a career invalid, it never occurred to me that there might be a better way to health.
In retrospect, I realized that several of the lengthy terms given to my apparent illnesses ended in s, and that if one were to string all those s’s along, one could create the sound a snake makes! Accompanying this notion was the more resonant, healing thought that as a beloved child of God, whose heritage is spiritual rather than material, I do not have a medical history, but rather I exist timelessly in God’s universe, reflecting His truth.
I have learned that the practice of Christian Science calls upon us to stay humble and alert in order to guard against temptation in all of its iterations, which in sum and separately harken back to Biblical episodes in which a serpentine appeal is made for the purpose of drawing man’s focus away from God. Such is the case when the devil appears to Jesus in the desert and attempts to deny the Christ and Jesus’ divine sonship by saying: “If thou therefore wilt worship me, all shall be thine.” In the next verse, Jesus negates the appeal saying, “Get thee behind me, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve” (Luke 4:7, 8).
