Christian Science is not just another ‘complementary health care practice’.

Many friends ‘pile on’ their regime of health care practices.  Try this, try that…supplements, nutrition, acupressure,  acupuncture, reike.  Thinking that maybe I have something up my sleeve as a Christian Scientist, they want to give it a try at times.  And, THAT’S great.  I understand that step by step we find it.  But I want to explain something, why there is such a turn-around in a new and different direction when you start studying Christian Science.

(One studies Christian Science by reading Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Rev. Mary Baker Eddy which was originally published in 1875 alongside the Bible.)

It’s hard not to grasp at straws when one is suffering, isn’t it?  But I DO know that having a Christly consciousness will bring relief and healing to any situation.  It’s the same spirit that prayers are offered to those in the hospital, or someone who just crosses your path. It’s really your duty to meet any need with that same Christly consciousness.

While I study, pray, and work, as consistently as I can, to maintain a clear, direct understanding of my own spirituality, it is not always the same when you just ‘dabble’, or pile on.  One foot in this or that school of thought, another in trying Christian Science.  (And, I am someone who is always open to seeing  Christian Science ideas finding their way out into the world, in other denominations and practices.)

I am talking about something more – the nitty gritty of getting in and doing the work.

Mary Baker Eddy wrote that it is the ‘radical reliance on Truth‘ that heals.  What does that mean?  More than just turning from other systems of healing, she is talking about Truth, another synonym for God.  Eddy gave us seven synonyms for God, and I find them helpful when talking with people who are even hesitant to say the word ‘God’ outloud:  Life, Truth, Love, Spirit, Soul, Principle and Mind.  All facets of the same diamond, you might say.

There is such a fundamental difference in Christian Science to other approaches, that it isn’t really fair to mix them.  The medical model relies on your whole fledged buy-in to the materiality approach, even if we are talking nutrition or homeopathy, or energy work.  While seemingly a step away from the medical model, these approaches are still working from a different basis.  One is like applying a patch vs. ‘the whole cloth’ if you know what I mean?  You Christians may get that reference to the whole cloth – like the robe Christ Jesus wore.

Christian Science is based on spiritual-truth-telling, by transformative thought.  Not by studying disease, but by studying health.  And not in a material sense either.  They contradict one another, don’t they?

In fact, they can sometimes seem to work against each other.  And it’s important to understand why –

Eddy discovered years ago that the ‘atmosphere of thought’ surrounding the patient/client was crucial.  Even medical researchers today study the placebo effect to understand expectations, the power of thought.

Just as Christ Jesus did in healing the young dead girl;  Jairus’ daughter [Mark 5]  He had to ‘put out’ those who were not present to faith, to healing; those who laughed when He said, ‘She but sleepeth”.  He wanted to keep the atmosphere around her pure, and focused.  Focused on healing.  Focused on life, not death.  And suddenly in that healing atmosphere, with Christ Jesus, she was alive, not dead.

There is such a fundamental difference in the frame of thought associated with spiritual healing than with medical, nutritional, oriental, energy models.  They don’t mix.  Not really.

I attended a Christian Science lecture last night in Glen Arbor, MI by Robert Gilbert, CSB [Christian Science Practitioner and Teacher].  He explained in a way I’ve never quite heard it, Eddy’s understanding of matter and thought.  Matter and thought = the same stuff!  Just as ice is a form of water as is steam, matter is thought taking form.  Wow.  That’s pretty clear isn’t it?  (It even has some parallels in the way quantum physics looks at particle and wave.)

And, why is SO important to guard your thoughts!  To keep them pure and centered on good.  “As a man thinketh, so is he.” Proverbs 23:7.  Eddy wrote:  “Stand porter at the door of thought. Admitting only such conclusions as you wish realized in bodily results, you will control yourself harmoniously.” (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 391)

But,what I want you to get, … even more important than what our individual (or collective for that matter) thoughts are, consider God’s thoughts.  Consider how God regards you.  From the beginning we are taught:  ‘Man was made in the image and likeness of God.  Very good.  Perfect. Jeremiah 29:11 says…

For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the LORD, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end.

– King James Bible “Authorized Version”, Cambridge Edition

God is ever active.  S/He didn’t create the world one day and leave it — No way.  God is active, thinking, loving us all the time; always.  That activity of God is another way to think of the Christ:  The action of God in the world.

That Christ, is what heals.  The Christ is what reveals.   That thinking, that knowing, that activity, that God, that perfection, is the Life of the world.  When we realize, become conscious, of God’s thoughts — they become our own.  Our world experience becomes one of joy, peace and health.  Wholeness.  “…There is no room for imperfection in perfection.” (S&H, page 205).  Like when you turn on the light in a dark room, there is no room for darkness anymore.  There is no room for disease, in the consciousness of God.  So it’s not human thought that heals – it is God thought.

Then you can say with me, ‘God is living me’.

That’s how Christ Jesus could say, ‘The Kingdom of God is at hand“.  It really is.  God’s thought is accessible and practical.  And in II Timothy 2: 15, “Study to show thyself approved unto God, a workman who needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.”

So “Dig in”….

 

Copyright held by Alexis Wittman

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