When Jesus met a man blind from birth, his disciples asked a question indicating they viewed the man’s blindness as a kind of penalty attached to him: “Master, who did sin, this man, or his parents, that he was born blind?” Jesus’ compassion and spiritual understanding exposed as a lie that false theological belief, when he replied: “Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents: but that the works of God should be made manifest in him” (John 9:2, 3). Then Jesus healed the man, proving that the man of God’s creating is perfect, forever free of penalties, forever sinless and upright.
We can glean four points of metaphysical healing from this case: 1) God is good and creates only good (see Genesis 1); 2) man—the spiritual identity of each one of us, male and female—is as holy and pure as our Maker, God, and is therefore not a sinner, but sinless; 3) the belief of man as a mortal subject to penalty is groundless and cannot rob the child of God of health and peace; and 4) the eternal law of divine Love overrules the belief of penalty.
Through Christian Science we learn that we do not have to tolerate any penalty, but can overcome it. We can take a firm mental stand against that which Jesus proved is not mandated by God, and so find permanent freedom.
Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, writes, “Let us remember that the eternal law of right, though it can never annul the law which makes sin its own executioner, exempts man from all penalties but those due for wrong-doing” (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 385). And, on the opposite page she says: “We should relieve our minds from the depressing thought that we have transgressed a material law and must of necessity pay the penalty. Let us reassure ourselves with the law of Love. God never punishes man for doing right, for honest labor, or for deeds of kindness, though they expose him to fatigue, cold, heat, contagion. If man seems to incur the penalty through matter, this is but a belief of mortal mind, not an enactment of wisdom, and man has only to enter his protest against this belief in order to annul it. Through this action of thought and its results upon the body, the student will prove to himself, by small beginnings, the grand verities of Christian Science” (p. 384).
The grand verities of this Science include the reality of God’s omnipresence, omnipotence, and omniscience. Since God, infinite Spirit, is good and is All-in-all, His spiritual creation, including man, is and remains spiritual and perfect. This penalty-free spiritual man is the true and only identity of everyone. As in Jesus’ time, so in ours, perfect God and perfect man is the bedrock of metaphysical healing.
But all around us we see the opposite of spiritual perfection, through the material senses. This is an aggressive mental suggestion of life in matter and mortality, of sin and penalty. To counteract it, we need to rely on our spiritual sense, spiritual intuition, and right reasoning to discern what truly is—what God knows. Persistently affirming spiritual truth lifts thought to the spiritual and true view of reality, to what Jesus called the kingdom of heaven at hand: present harmony, peace, and health. It awakens us to a higher sense of manhood and womanhood and purpose, for we are not doomed mortals, but God’s children, capable of right-doing only. As we glimpse this truth, yield to it, and earnestly persist in putting it into practice, aligning our lives with divine Principle, Love, we can prove our innate freedom from penalties.
We can mentally and persistently protest, based on the nature of God, divine Love, until freedom is won. This protest is the “action of thought” that turns the human consciousness from a suffering sense of life in matter to the actuality of life in and of infinite divine Spirit. This true view breaks the material sense of discord, removes any wrongful penalties in our experience, and reveals man’s unbroken harmony and blessedness.
Several years ago I had an opportunity to learn more about this. I flew to a business conference unable to hear out of one ear, which had closed up suddenly. I also had a sore on one foot. Initially, I associated the ear problem with having worn earplugs overnight for about a year, and the sore on my foot with wearing hastily purchased new shoes that weren’t the correct width.
I had packed the new shoes to wear later in the week, thinking my foot would be well by then. But despite my prayers, the sore on my foot was still there. I was believing I had incurred a fair penalty by wearing the wrong width, but when I called a Christian Science practitioner for prayerful help, he immediately assured me I was under no such penalty. He patiently explained that God’s law, the law of Love, annuls the belief of penalty.
I saw that no material condition or circumstance could interfere with, alter, or damage my God-given spiritual perfection and well-being. God, Spirit, alone was in charge of me, not matter. As I prayed and pondered further, I saw how the spiritual fact of “no penalty” applied to my hearing problem, too. I mentioned this when I spoke with the practitioner the next day.
He lovingly said, “Know that you love to listen! Your receptivity to good, to God, cannot be impaired or obstructed.” He went on to explain that the spiritual concept of ears may be thought of as receptivity, and that spiritual receptivity cannot be impaired. Likewise, the spiritual concept of foot may represent understanding, and spiritual understanding cannot be hampered. This freed me from believing that the problems were physical conditions. Now I saw them clearly as false states of mortal thought that divine Science was correcting with the true, spiritual idea. This is why divine metaphysics or scientific prayer heals what appear to be physical problems; they are actually human misconceptions, illusions, not an authentic part of God’s child.
At the conference, I was alert, attentive, and appreciative. I now understood and put into practice that the divine demand for and supply of receptivity and understanding is the spiritual basis for the human activity of intelligent communication.
As I stuck to the truth of my spiritual being, already and inviolably perfect and whole, I felt gentle movement within the ear. The pain gradually diminished. The foot condition cleared up quickly and I was able to wear my new shoes with no ill effects. Several days later, a foreign substance dislodged from my ear without any help from me, my ear popped, and normal hearing was restored.
Being willing to be guided hourly, daily, by the divine idea leads us to the higher law of Love, which governs all and overrules penalties.
