Most Christian Science practitioners have probably had a patient say something like: “Well, I’ve read the Bible Lesson and I’ve looked up the citations you gave me from the Bible and the writings of Mary Baker Eddy. Mentally I feel really inspired, but the body has not changed.”
Unlike medical treatment, where changes in the body are observed and recorded moment by moment, Christian Science healing operates on a completely different basis. Instead of regarding the condition needing healing as a material fact that needs to change and to be observed, the Christian Scientist understands the condition to be the temporary, external evidence of a mistaken belief about man, whose being as an idea of God is actually spiritual. In Christian Science the body changes when thought is spiritually transformed because it is turned toward God and away from the body.
To stare at the body hoping for change would be similar to staring at the mirror hoping what we see reflected will change. Christian Science takes quite literally the first chapter in the Bible, which describes man as the image and likeness of God. It says, “God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good” (Genesis 1:31).
