There has been much discussion over the past year regarding “immunity”—specifically, how it can be achieved and maintained. There are many theories on how to manage the risk of infection and how to incapacitate the virus to the point where society can fully resume normal functioning, though not without accepting a “new normal” of health and safety. While sincere efforts to solve this problem of contagious disease are honorable, and so often motivated by a genuine desire to help the world, is there a way to approach the problem that honors the power of God, good, more than the so-called power of matter?
The teachings of Christian Science approach the subject of disease from a radical, and biblical, standpoint. The Apostle John writes of God: “All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made” (John 1:3). The Christian Science textbook, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy, elaborates: “Spirit, God, has created all in and of Himself. Spirit never created matter. There is nothing in Spirit out of which matter could be made, for, as the Bible declares, without the Logos, the Æon or Word of God, ‘was not anything made that was made’ ” (p. 335). Also from the textbook: “God is infinite omnipresent Spirit. If Spirit is all and is everywhere, what and where is matter?” (p. 223).
Reasoning from this standpoint of the allness of Spirit, we find that matter, and therefore disease, loses its significance. In reality, matter is without identity or character. It cannot act, react, or metastasize; it is without cause, nor can it be a cause. It is simply a term to describe that which is unreal and temporal, the supposed opposite of Spirit. What is spiritual—what is real, universal, and indestructible—overrules and prevails over that which is material, worldly, and mortal.
