How often we find ourselves counting, measuring, and calculating numbers to answer a question, solve a problem, or describe a situation. Numbers permeate so many facets of life, from measuring personal health, to calculating how much time or money we have, to the state of the climate, to name just a few.
Yet, more than 100 years ago, the founder of this magazine, Mary Baker Eddy, cautioned readers about the downsides of certain kinds of data use. In the Christian Science textbook she wrote, “Except for the error of measuring and limiting all that is good and beautiful, man would enjoy more than threescore years and ten and still maintain his vigor, freshness, and promise” (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 246).
This passage points out what is problematic about relying on numbers to measure our prospects: Numbers often represent limitation and lead to a constrained sense of goodness, life, health, supply, and even beauty. So instead of looking at material measurements, we can turn to an understanding of God as divine Principle to strengthen our conviction that both beauty and goodness exist without measure.
Rather than looking to numbers to assess our health—physical, financial, mental, social—we can seek a spiritual approach to knowing ourselves.
From this perspective, we can perceive numbers spiritually, without any implication of limitation. “Spiritual ideas, like numbers and notes, start from Principle, and admit no materialistic beliefs,” Science and Health states (p. 298). Separating the spiritual concept of numbers from the material beliefs about them can free us from the negative expectations attached to the use of numbers in many situations.
For example, measuring personal data such as age, weight, height, temperature, heart rate, blood pressure, calories, hours slept, and so forth, can have the effect of materializing our concept of life and shaping expectations based on material conditions. Refraining from unnecessary measurements and separating thought from the beliefs associated with measuring these variables, we are free to rely wholeheartedly on the infinity of divine Principle, where numbers represent only good and beautiful spiritual ideas, which are unlimited. If we find ourselves holding fearful or limited expectations because of some data point, we can instead consider the situation from a metaphysical basis to gain an entirely inspiring perspective.
More than 140 years of testimonies of healing in the Christian Science Sentinel and Journal provide thousands of examples of Christian Scientists healing problems defined by personal data points. Healings of low blood sugar, high blood pressure, irregular heartbeat, overweight, underweight, lack of sleep, age-related ailments—all of these verified healings demonstrate the freedom that is gained by refusing to accept predictions based on certain numbers and measures, and instead accepting the spiritual facts of infinite Principle, God, good.
Rather than looking to numbers to assess our health—physical, financial, mental, social—we can seek a spiritual approach to knowing ourselves. A foundational premise of Spirit-based thinking is summarized in these two sentences from Science and Health: “There is no life, truth, intelligence, nor substance in matter. All is infinite Mind and its infinite manifestation, for God is All-in-all” (p. 468).
Reasoning from this basis excludes the possibility of matter-based measures having any power to dictate our experience. Seeing through material assertions metaphysically, by drawing closer to God as infinite Mind and understanding ourselves as God’s infinite expression, gently erases what we thought to be so true and fear-inducing. It replaces negative, limiting predictions and reassures us that we truly are entirely spiritual, whole and healthy, blessed children of God.
Anchoring our expectations in the spiritual concepts of infinity, allness, oneness, and eternity opens thought to the limitless possibilities of good, instead of the restrictions of finiteness and lack. Infinity and allness describe God. Oneness and eternity define our relationship to God. We have one God, one Christ—the true idea of God—and the consequence of that oneness is that God and God’s reflection, man, is all there is, eternally. In a Spirit-based universe, there is no division, duality, plurality, or limitation. There is only infinity and oneness.
This was brought home to me one evening when I was canning jam. I inadvertently poured boiling water over my hand. I had done this in a similar manner a couple of years earlier. During that experience, I prayed diligently and the pain disappeared. However, large blisters developed on my hand that took a number of days to heal. I felt I had learned a great deal in that experience. So when this happened again, I immediately turned my thought to God.
This time, it occurred to me that if I had poured water over my hand that I thought was only 80 degrees F., I wouldn’t expect to feel anything other than soothing water. It was my belief that 200-degree water would cause pain that was the problem. As I prayed to understand that nothing but harmony had occurred in reality—as hurt and harm aren’t part of the allness and invariability of God’s goodness—the pain stopped and I continued with what I had been doing. There were no marks on my hand, and no evidence of any burn developed.
This example of reasoning from a metaphysical basis nullified the prediction that a particularly hot water temperature would cause pain and harm. This illustrated the truth of the following passage from Science and Health: “Belief in a material basis, from which may be deduced all rationality, is slowly yielding to the idea of a metaphysical basis, looking away from matter to Mind as the cause of every effect” (p. 268).
Numbers are not a cause. Neither are they indicators pointing to other so-called causes. The material beliefs often associated with certain numbers are entirely separate from the facts of a spiritual universe, created and maintained by divine Mind, the only cause and creator. Nothing is ever too little, too much, too hot, too cold, too soon, too late, too slow, too fast, too far, too high in the kingdom of heaven, the place Christ Jesus calls on us to seek first (see Matthew 6:31–33).
Seen in their spiritual light, numbers represent concepts to use wisely and with dominion. In addition to innumerable practical uses, mathematics provides wonderful insights into the eternal nature of the spiritual universe. It’s when we’re tempted to think numbers can tell us anything about our health or wealth or future prospects individually and globally that we need to be alert.
For example, consideration of one’s finances—how much money we make, how much money we have, how much money we need, how much money we’ve lost—occupies a tremendous amount of thought at different times for many people. In the passage mentioned above in Matthew, Christ Jesus instructs us to turn our thought instead to heaven, to the consciousness of God, and keep it there. Then we can trust that our needs will be met in ways we could never have outlined.
The Christian Science periodicals include thousands of testimonies from people all over the world who have overcome, through prayer, problems related to economic insecurity, including healings of poverty, business failures, and lack of employment. In so many ways, Christian Scientists have worked through dire economic forecasts to demonstrate dominion over material limitations and find lasting peace and security.
Nothing is ever too little, too much, too hot, too cold, too slow, too fast, too far, too high in the kingdom of heaven.
In my own experience, our family was able to meet our financial obligations when we had three small children and my husband was in graduate school. Our needs were met in ways that were often unexpected, through affirming the allness and permanence of divine Love in our daily prayers. In due time both my husband and I found jobs on the same campus that blessed us and our family for many years.
Gaining a sense of dominion and peace in the face of frightening human predictions comes as we pray to humbly see and feel the infinity, allness, ever-presence, and everlasting good nature of God, divine Principle, Love. This dominion doesn’t mean we are free to willfully ignore an empty checking account, empty gas tank, or extremely hot day, for example, and naively hope things will go well. We fulfill our obligations and live peacefully and joyfully as we pray daily to understand the nature of spiritual reality.
Whether the claims relate to our human bodies, to the body of our churches, or to the global body of humanity, we can demonstrate dominion in the face of depressing or fear-inducing statistics through prayer and inspiration. Obeying the First Commandment to have only one God, one Mind, and refusing to believe in any other power, keeps us conscious of our closeness to God and our home in the kingdom of heaven.
