Human sympathy for those who are suffering has impelled some medical, charitable, and religious organizations to find ways to comfort people as they are dying—or even to help hasten death. Some have attempted to comfort people by explaining why they feel God would allow or even cause death. Some believe that prayer can bring healing to those dying, but too often the word healing means to bring comfort and hope in the expectation of life after death. Isn’t there hope to enable everyone to enjoy health here and now? The answer is a definite “Yes!”
Christian Science, the Science of Christianity, has a very powerful answer to all human suffering, and it does not involve giving in to death. Christ Jesus and his disciples healed every kind of physical problem mankind faces today—hereditary, congenital, and contagious diseases; long-standing injuries or defects; and age-related conditions—through prayer to God, Spirit, alone. Jesus never simply comforted people as they died. He restored them to life and health.
Even in the Old Testament, God gives us His assurance that His will for us is to live, not die: “Cast away from you all your transgressions, whereby ye have transgressed; and make you a new heart and a new spirit: for why will ye die, O house of Israel? For I have no pleasure in the death of him that dieth, saith the Lord God: wherefore turn yourselves, and live ye” (Ezekiel 18:31, 32).
Jesus never simply comforted people as they died. He restored them to life and health.
It is not God that causes us to suffer or die but rather sin—that is, worshiping, honoring, loving, trusting in, or fearing the flesh, supposed material laws, and the physical senses, rather than worshiping Spirit alone.
The prophet Jeremiah explains that worshiping or accepting matter as a power equal to God is what keeps us from finding healing. He asked, “Is there no balm in Gilead; is there no physician there? why then is not the health of the daughter of my people recovered?” (Jeremiah 8:22). And he said, “Go up into Gilead, and take balm, O virgin, the daughter of Egypt: in vain shalt thou use many medicines; for thou shalt not be cured” (46:11), and, “Heal me, O Lord, and I shall be healed; save me, and I shall be saved: for thou art my praise” (17:14).
From beginning to end we read in the Bible of the infinite, unwavering, unfailing nature of God’s love for all of us, manifested as forgiveness, redemption, restoration, and healing. But how infinitely wonderful was the expression of the Father-Mother’s love for His children through the advent of Christ Jesus, His “only begotten Son” (John 3:16), who taught and demonstrated for all of us what it means to be the image and likeness of divine Spirit.
Jesus was never impressed nor intimidated by the evidence of the physical senses—whether it was the dead body of Lazarus buried for four days, an untouchable leper, a mob trying to push him over a cliff, or a storm about to sink the boat he was in. He listened only to what spiritual sense was telling him through the “still, small voice” of Christ, Truth—reporting that God, Spirit, alone is our Life, and that Life is eternal. He proved this by raising Lazarus from the dead, stilling the storm, healing the man of leprosy, and walking through the violent mob untouched.
People were very glad to be instantly freed from suffering or restored to life. But often, instead of understanding and accepting Jesus’ teaching that God, Spirit, is the only Life, people clung to him personally. Today many people are still waiting for the physical Jesus to return to save them. And yet, Jesus taught that it was not a person which healed, but the power of God through Christ, the spiritual idea of God. He said, “I can of mine own self do nothing” and “The Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works” (John 5:30; 14:10).
Although the disciple Peter saw Jesus as the Messiah or Savior, he and the other disciples still apparently believed that it was the physical Jesus who would save them through human ways and means. But Jesus had been teaching that we need to be born again—not of the flesh, which suffers and dies, but of the Spirit. Not in the next life, but here and now—by purifying our love for and elevating our understanding of God and man.
Jesus was demonstrating the Christly nature of God’s man as pure, humble, compassionate, spiritually-minded, and faithfully obedient to God’s laws. He was teaching that it is these qualities which open our eyes to our true spiritual nature as God’s reflection, naturally manifesting health, righteousness, and life eternal.
Knowing that he had to demonstrate the powerless and illusory nature of the flesh or matter, and in line with prophecy, Jesus voluntarily submitted to betrayal, brutal lashing, and crucifixion.
While in the garden of Gethsemane just before his arrest, Jesus prayed to be spared this last lesson for mankind. Although he knew he had the power to avoid the experience, in humble submission he said, “Not my will, but thine, be done” (Luke 22:42)—thus obeying the first great commandment: absolute love for God alone (see Matthew 22:37, 38). On the cross he forgave all his persecutors, thus obeying the second great commandment, “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself” (Matthew 22:39).
His sacrifice showed how unselfed love overcomes all the sins of the world. His submission to the attempted destruction of his life, followed by his resurrection from death, proved for all time the powerlessness of hate, the nothingness of matter, the unreality of death, and the supremacy of Spirit as ever-present Life.
Christ Jesus taught us to overcome death, not submit to it. He said, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved” (John 3:16, 17). And, “Verily, verily, I say unto you, If a man keep my saying, he shall never see death” (John 8:51).
When my mother was in her seventies and working for The Mother Church, she became very ill. Although many people had been healed through her work as a Christian Science practitioner, her physical condition appeared to get worse and worse until it looked like there was no way she would be healed.
Jesus’ sacrifice showed how unselfed love overcomes all the sins of the world.
She said that the thoughts coming to her were so aggressive: “Just give up and die so that you don’t have to suffer anymore. No one will say anything because you have lived a good life of service to others.” She recognized these thoughts as coming from the carnal mind or worldly thinking. She remembered how Jesus taught us to overcome death, not submit to it.
As she continued to pray, the Christ message came to turn away totally from the illusion of a suffering body and instead to pray simply to purify her love for God and for God’s man. She said that as she did this, she stopped noticing time passing and stopped noticing the pain. She began to recover and soon was completely healed—so much so, that the next 15 years of her life were her most productive in the healing practice!
Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer of the Science of Christ, wrote in the textbook of Christian Science: “When it is learned that disease cannot destroy life, and that mortals are not saved from sin or sickness by death, this understanding will quicken into newness of life. It will master either a desire to die or a dread of the grave, and thus destroy the great fear that besets mortal existence” (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 426). She also wrote: “Every trial of our faith in God makes us stronger. The more difficult seems the material condition to be overcome by Spirit, the stronger should be our faith and the purer our love” (p. 410).
The more we learn about God as the only Life, and the more we learn about the true, Christlike nature of God’s man and put what we are learning into practice, the more success and dominion we will have. What frees us from the aggressive belief that death is inevitable or God’s will? Paul summed it up this way: “There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death” (Romans 8:1, 2).
The operative words for me are, “who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.” Serving two gods—matter and Spirit—can only bring confusion, fear, and hopelessness. But following Christ Jesus, walking not after the flesh—pleasure in matter, human will, material reasoning, or medical theories—but after the immutable, perfect law of God, frees us from the false belief in sin and death. Life is eternal, and Christ Jesus’ resurrection proved that for all eternity and for all mankind.
