Spiritual truth-knowing heals

THE spiritual truths that Christ Jesus gave us can show us the way to physical healing. All kinds of disorders fell before the Christ-power he exemplified. How did he heal?

He said, ``If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed; and ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.''1 The freeing truth is that God is all-powerful good, Truth itself, which is well able to destroy whatever would oppose it. Certainly it was Jesus' understanding of God as omnipotent Truth, supreme Spirit, the one almighty power of the universe, that undergirded the healing work.

We learn in Christian Science that misery and sickness are, fundamentally, the outcome of not knowing Truth, God. They are the manifestations of the whole discordant tide of materialistic thinking that would sweep us along in its current until we have no control over our condition, no real assurance of staying well.

To ``know the truth'' that breaks the mesmerism of such thinking and brings healing means to judge the essential reality of all things, not from the basis of what material sense is saying, but from the basis of what the divine and perfect Mind, God, includes as valid. It means to live in accord with Him, as Christ Jesus did; to express the grace, love, purity, and integrity of the divine nature.

Just as the science of mathematics is not disturbed by whatever miscalculations we may write on a blackboard, so the heaven of our spiritual consciousness -- our natural, God-given sense of the presence of God -- cannot be disrupted by the errors of false, mortal sense.

Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, puts it this way: ``Jesus' healing was spiritual in its nature, method, and design. He wrought the cure of disease through the divine Mind, which gives all true volition, impulse, and action; and destroys the mental error made manifest physically, and establishes the opposite manifestation of Truth upon the body in harmony and health.''2

I recall waking up one morning to find a foot and ankle alarmingly swollen and painful. Even the weight of the sheet on the affected area was painful. Turning to God, Truth, I came to see that since God and His utter goodness fill all space, nothing contrary to good was true in divine reality. All of us, from a spiritual standpoint, were perfect expressions of the one Mind, moving together in mutual understanding and harmony.

With a grateful heart, I knew that God was really in charge of everything. The omnipotent Truth that these declarations represented was continuously asserting itself, and I knew this must be expressed in terms of healing.

Improvement began to take place. Then, during the two days that followed -- through prayer alone -- a complete, permanent healing came about.

God doesn't underwrite discords. He holds us free, in His spiritual image. His knowledge of His own perfect spiritual creation, including you and me as He is knowing us to be, has never included any evidence of disease. Why consider a condition that never really began in the first place, as far as Truth's record is concerned, to be either ``chronic,'' ``advanced,'' or ``terminal''? Such a question may seem puzzling, perhaps even foolish, but it's really very logical -- and healing -- as we consider God and man from a spiritual standpoint and strive to know the truth in light of Jesus' example.

Christian Science requires the regeneration that turns our thought to the real substance of our identity, which is wholly spiritual. That substance is sound, unaffected and uninfested by false sickly elements of any sort. In the pure, God-derived consciousness of our spiritual wholeness, there is no personal willfulness or ill temper, no old trouble-making mental pictures that can linger or manifest themselves as abnormality and suffering. God's goodness and perfection are all there ever has been, in reality, and all there ever can be!

When we persist in knowing such spiritual truths -- realizing them to be truth, despite appearances -- fear subsides and anguish is stilled; our experience improves in all directions. A much grander outlook opens up to us, and a deeper sense of well-being is established. We awaken to beauties and blessings right now that we haven't been aware of before, all showing the ever-presence of our Almighty Father-Mother, who loves us.

Such are the fruits of Christly truth-knowing, which operates in our own behalf and enables us to bless others.

1John 8:31, 32. 2Rudimental Divine Science, p. 3. - NO BIBLE VERSE TODAY -