One Wednesday evening several years ago, I gave a testimony at my local Christian Science branch church. I discussed how our thought can be healed about the past and thus painful memories can be eliminated and stop reoccurring in our thoughts. During the testimony, I mentioned a Christian Science practitioner and teacher who, as a teenager in Germany during World War II, had been put in a forced labor camp for refusing to participate in the Hitler Youth organization after his dad was jailed. While he was there, he was whipped severely.
After the war, he came to America, and years later he realized he needed to pray more regarding mental scars from the war. He prayed to understand that “in God’s reality, in His kingdom, there had never been a war or its consequences” (Arno Preller, “Why forgive?” Christian Science Sentinel, September 21, 2009). And he also prayed to genuinely forgive all involved—not to condone any evil actions, but to see all as God truly made them, as God’s children. One day, after he had found his mental freedom, he realized that scars that had been on his back for over twenty years were gone! (To hear more, listen to Christian Science Sentinel—Radio Edition, programs #550 and #938, on JSH-Online.com.)
I was also familiar with an account in which a person asked Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, why a man who was struggling with a wound received during the Civil War was not being healed. Mrs. Eddy “replied in effect, that the practitioner as well as the patient believed there had once been a war, and regarded it as a link in the man’s history” (Ira W. Packard, “Justification,” Sentinel, May 10, 1913). It made a big impression on me to realize that in God’s kingdom, war and other evil occurrences had never really happened, and that understanding this leads to healing.
