How the Christian Science Healing Process Works
Spiritual Healing of Physical Ailments Explained by Mary Baker Eddy
Aug 25, 2009
The title of Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures connects health with scientific law, since any science operates within the framework of law and requires obedience to that law. The Key to the Scriptures links science with Christianity and with many healings as recorded in the Bible, particularly those of Jesus.
Spiritual Healings Were Performed Both Before and After Jesus’ Ministry
Spiritual healing existed long before Jesus appeared to the world and before Christianity was founded. The Hebrews, Abraham, Moses, Elijah and Elisha were a few who healed through divine means, proving that there is a law of health and that prayer can invoke the power which brings this divine law to bear on the human body. The four gospels are filled with healings and mention of health. The book of Acts tells of many healings done by the followers of Jesus after the ascension.
Spiritual healings were accepted and commonplace for centuries, having been proven by what would today be called scientific methods of observation and experimentation. Gradually, medical means and theories took the place of the divine method of attaining health.
During this same time frame, in the centuries that followed the ascension of Jesus, certain theologians suggested that man should suffer and that he was to bear sickness and ill health meekly. The primary reason Jesus’ spiritual healing methods were abandoned was that materialism buried the divine law and matter seemed more powerful than spirit. But the ever-present law of health is as available and usable today as it was when Jesus himself used those laws in a practical way.
Christian Science Was Founded on These Laws of Spiritual Healing
Mary Baker Eddy first made the connection between the scientific laws of thought and physical health when she was healed of injuries she suffered in an accident that was feared would be fatal. The principles of spiritual healing were revealed to her as a result of this incident. She said, “if Christianity is not scientific and science is not of God then there is no invariable law, and truth becomes an accident.” (p. 342 of Science and Health)
Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary defines health as “original purity or integrity.” Health is a built-in characteristic of man, and can never be taken out of him. It is forever present to be brought to light. When ill health appears, his solution in Christian Science lies in his ability to change his thoughts of existence from material consciousness to spiritual consciousness, from the awareness of matter to the discernment of Spirit. It's said that impermanent fragile flesh and its diseases are just sense impressions and are powerless to harm God’s image.
Webster further defines science as “knowledge covering general truths or the operation of general laws as obtained and tested through scientific method.” The scientific knowledge of health has been tested by Mary Baker Eddy and hundreds of Christian science practitioners as well as other spiritual healers through the years. Jesus also used this scientific law of health. A connection with the Christ consciousness, no matter how fleeting, brings a religious person into intimate contact with God.
Healing Process Combines Scientific Laws of Health with the Christ Spirit
The Christian Science healing system restores that “original purity and integrity” of health by teaching its students to apply the teachings of Jesus and to yield to the laws of right thinking as he is believed to have done. They learn to affirm the real selfhood of a patient as the image and idea of that mind, hence an incorporeal sinless manifestation of the divine mind. They deny the reality of the material senses which experience disease and cast them out of thought as alien to God’s man, whose senses are spiritual.
Specific details of a sickness are detected and denied existence on the basis that God alone is the creator of health and that man cannot lose that health. The system of argument as outlined in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures is helpful because it leads human thought away from the materialistic and destructive to the spiritual and immutable. Every human being has an innate spiritual sense and this sense unites each individual with divine Mind. Through spiritual sense God finds an open door to human thought, enters it and governs it. Governing human thought, it also governs the human body. It banishes out of consciousness any negative mental forces that would constrict, congest or distort the organs and actions of the body.
Nothing is too severe, too mentally hidden, too boastfully wrong to resist the power of God that comes to the seeker of truth when he applies the principles of Christian Science to his physical health.
Readers may also enjoy Mary Baker Eddy Taught Spiritual Healing and The Special Terminology of Christian Science, also by this author.
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