A few years ago I strained my lower back while gardening. Over the coming week, the problem quickly deteriorated until I was bedridden and could barely move without painful back spasms.
I called a Christian Science practitioner to pray for me. As I also prayed, I sensed the need to examine my thought more deeply. Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer of Christian Science, states in one of her writings, “Ofttimes examine yourselves, and see if there be found anywhere a deterrent of Truth and Love, and ‘hold fast that which is good’ ” (The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, pp. 128–129). She discovered that sometimes “a moral question may hinder the recovery of the sick” (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 419).
So, as I began to examine myself mentally, I realized that for some time I had been troubled with a sense of disappointment and discouragement over my inability to see others make progress in their health. My first reaction to that thought was, “That can’t be! Being disappointed or doubting God’s care of others would be a sin to me because it would be breaking the First Commandment: ‘Thou shalt have no other gods before me’ (Exodus 20:3).”
The Bible is full of quotes about the absolute love and care of God for His dear children. If we are truly following the First Commandment—the basis of divine Science and Christian healing—we know, by the laws He has written in our heart, not to doubt His truth, power, love, and grace. God is all-powerful, and completely good and loving. So I had to ask myself: “Am I believing in and fearing another opposite power? Am I doubting God’s complete control over the universe, including man?” At first I thought, “I can’t be doing that—it must be something else!”
Then I remembered a statement in Science and Health about the healing of sin: “To put down the claim of sin, you must detect it, remove the mask, point out the illusion, and thus get the victory over sin and so prove its unreality” (p. 447). I then realized it was a sense of pride that seemed to be “masking” my ability to recognize my disappointment and remove it from my thinking.
As a Christian, I know I am supposed to trust God. A sense of disappointment meant to me a lack of trust. Throughout my life, as I have practiced Christian Science, my faith and trust in God has been based on revelation, spiritual understanding, reason, and demonstration. Yet, I had allowed myself to be personally proud of my healings through Christian Science treatment. The Christ has nothing to do with pride. And that sense of pride was masking the error that needed to be removed from my thought. I realized that human personality, which claims to be our identity, is really a false sense that expresses egotism and pride. Through the understanding and acknowledgment that God is the only Ego, and that I am His image and likeness, I gained more humility and a renewed sense of assurance in God’s healing and saving power.
With that mask of pride removed and the error of disappointment identified, I was now ready to hear the ideas that God was already sending me. I was able to yield to the grace of God, ever present to comfort, guide, heal, and save me.
Soon, a beautiful statement from the weekly Christian Science Bible Lesson came powerfully to my thought: “The great fact that God lovingly governs all, never punishing aught but sin, is your standpoint, from which to advance and destroy the human fear of sickness” (Science and Health, p. 412). This statement gave me a great deal of comfort. I no longer felt burdened by a personal responsibility for healing, because it wasn’t my power, but God’s, that governed.
I felt relieved and renewed! Within two or three days I was up and moving around out of bed. And, there was something else that impressed me about this healing. Before, whenever I felt my lower back, I had always felt one of the vertebrae slightly protruding from the others. And I could sleep only on a certain type of mattress. Now all was in perfect alignment. I was completely healed! I can now sleep on any type of mattress, soft or hard, and in any position.
I’m very grateful for an ever-increasing sense of the all-power, ever-presence, and merciful lovingkindness of God that Christ Jesus taught. I’m also very grateful to Mrs. Eddy for leading us to the Science that Jesus taught and demonstrated.
Robert Van Der Like
Ocala, Florida, US
