About six years ago I was bitten on my legs by three dogs. It was summer, and I’d been wearing shorts. As I walked my bicycle home from the co-op garden where I had been, I reached out to my Father-Mother God in prayer, and it came to me that the first step toward healing was to forgive the dogs and their minders who had dropped their leashes.
As a lifelong Christian Scientist, I had had many healings of the effects of accidents and had memorized these words in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy: “Accidents are unknown to God, or immortal Mind . . .” (p. 424). Mind is used here as a name for God. Instead of just repeating those memorized words, I really got that I could deny accidents and that any resulting injury ever happened, no matter how aggressive it all seemed. I had learned that God’s care is permanent, continuous, and loving always. Accidents are only a subjective belief in a power apart from God. So I could reverse and deny the material evidence.
Eddy writes, “Health is not a condition of matter, but of Mind; nor can the material senses bear reliable testimony on the subject of health” (Science and Health, p. 120). In Christian Science, we heal by realizing what is actually true spiritually, what God sees in us, and this nullifies the material evidence. In Genesis, we read that God made man—male and female—in His own image, and all that God made is “very good” (see Genesis 1:27, 31). This is a very important concept about our true selfhood.
