MANY YEARS AGO, after a dentist told me I had an infected tooth, I prayed for a few hours and began wondering why the healing was taking so long. Then I came across this statement from Science and Health: "Become conscious for a single moment that Life and intelligence are purely spiritual,—neither in nor of matter,—and the body will then utter no complaints" (p. 14). I realized I only needed to achieve a "single moment" of pure spiritual consciousness to be healed, not the complete understanding of God. Just one moment!
I continued praying, focusing on knowing the simple truth: "God is good." I saw that if God was good and all, then nothing unlike good, for instance, an infection, could exist. Within the next hour I was healed of the pain and inflammation.
Up to that point, I had been praying to know "God is good" but then would mentally add "except that the dentist said this ..." or, "but it still hurts." Once those "excepts" and "buts" were wiped away, I unconditionally accepted what I was praying with and all that was left was a clear, conscious knowing: God is good.
The understanding of God's omnipotence clears away the doubts that hinder quick and effective healing. A friend recently described this process as getting rid of the "yabbuts." These are the "yes, but" thoughts that try to keep us from seeing the truth of life as spiritual. They are lies based on reasoning that life is in matter, or errors that attempt to creep into our thinking asking for acceptance. When the clatter of this material reasoning is exposed and eliminated from our thinking, then the truth of God's laws is revealed.
We might have a lot to learn about Christian Science and about the laws of God's infinite goodness, but we can demonstrate what we do know every day. When walking down the street, we don't wonder if we'll float off the earth. There exists a law of gravity that, although it can be studied in great depth, can be accepted and is experienced without years of study. And we don't say that the laws of gravity might not work today because it is cloudy or because we don't know how fast the earth is spinning. Similarly, we don't need to have volumes of scholarly knowledge or be ready to ascend before we can heal an infected tooth, for example.
Jesus emphasized putting what we know about God to work, comparing it to the simple trust of little children. He told his disciples, "Verily I say unto you, Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child, he shall not enter therein" (Mark 10:15). We need childlike receptivity, as Mary Baker Eddy explained: "Jesus loved little children because of their freedom from wrong and their receptiveness of right. While age is halting between two opinions or battling with false beliefs, youth makes easy and rapid strides towards Truth" (Science and Health, p. 236). That simple receptivity with no conditions is the key. It brings a freedom from clutter—accumulated thoughts, beliefs, and theories about material life—that opens the door to healing. When Jesus healed, there was an expectation of immediate healing: no "yabbuts." Likewise, children innocently and completely accept that life is spiritual because they are not burdened by an accumulation of materiality. They don't know the clutter, the human reasoning that can pollute thought and interfere with healing. Jesus insisted that childlike receptivity is inherent in everyone.
Clearing the clutter can begin by recognizing there is no separation between God and man. Each of us has our place as an individual expression of God, just like the number "5" takes its place in expressing the infinity of the number system. You cannot remove 5. Five remains no matter how many times I say, "except I deleted the number 5" or "but that 5 looks crooked and no good." We simply reject anything that knocks on our thought-door that would claim that 5 is no longer 5—or that the man is no longer the expression of God.
False suggestions only exist in human thought, and once they are removed, we see the simple truth that brings healing.
Like 5 in the number system, we cannot be removed from God's system of ideas. Clearing out suggestive thoughts that God is not complete involves not accepting that they are true. False suggestions only exist in human thought, and once they are removed, we see the simple truth that brings healing.
While I was serving as the First Reader at my branch church, I decided to prepare readings for a Wednesday testimony meeting on the topic of the simplicity of Truth. As the week progressed, however, I began to feel unwell. I considered calling a substitute reader to conduct the service but felt it was too late. During the time for testimonies, I prayed with some of the ideas I had just read.
For instance, Science and Health states: "Truth is affirmative, and confers harmony. All metaphysical logic is inspired by this simple rule of Truth, which governs all reality. By the truthful arguments you employ, and especially by the spirit of Truth and Love which you entertain, you will heal the sick" (p. 418). Truth, as used here, is a synonym or name for God. I was taking a stand, literally and figuratively, for Truth or God by being in my place as First Reader. I knew that sickness is an error, the opposite of Truth, and has no possible existence and no reality because there could be nothing beyond infinite Truth.
At the end of the service, I realized I hadn't used a single tissue from the stack I had brought with me—the illness was completely gone. On the way home, I rejoiced at how easily the illness disappeared, but found myself thinking, "This is great, but will it be back in the morning?"
Then I recalled one of the favorite activities in our youngest Sunday School classes is playing "knock-knock." The children fold their hands to make a gate. Then the teacher knocks on the door. The child asks "Who is there?" The teacher then mentions either a "good thought" or a "bad thought." The children quickly differentiate and clench their little hands tightly to prevent the bad thoughts from getting through the gate. The gate represents our ability to analyze the thoughts presenting themselves to us, like the knocking on my thought: "... but will it be back in the morning?"
So I took a cue from the children and mentally made a thought-gate. Any knocking by bad thoughts—such as the thought that sickness could take extended time to be healed—was met with firmer sealing of my mental gate. Remembering the healing of my tooth, I stood my ground and held again to Truth, to "God is good." Period. Full stop. No exceptions. There was no return of the illness, no aftereffects.
We need to stand guard at our thought-gate every day. The clutter of material reasoning found in advertising, water cooler gossip, or lunch conversations—about, for instance, the latest health theories or fears—can be recognized as budding "yabbuts" that we can exclude from our thinking. The infinity of God's wisdom will provide the exact message needed, the simple and healing truth, exactly when we need it.
