We share the road with Muslims

By Anthony J Whitehouse CS

I have invariably found Muslims to be people of great grace. When I started looking into their scriptures I found them to be based on the Abrahamic and Mosaic tradition I found we had a great deal in common.

Visiting a young Muslim man in prison I found I did not have to resort to Christian stereotypes to teach him about divine science. He understood his relationship to God just as well as I did. After having introduced the science implicit in that relationship i.e. the sense that he should not let his mind be a place which harboured self-pity (irrespective of the circumstances) the healing was immediate. He was released from prison after only serving 18 months of a six year sentence for attempted manslaughter.

What was equally interesting to me was passing a morning with a young Muslim man on a beach near Colombo in Sri Lanka. His parents had the beach villa next to mine. We talked about God and he asked me very pertinent questions. I still remember his quiet demeanour , his white robes and skull cap. Here was a soul of great gentleness and devotion. He took in what I said and then gave me a back a succinct summary which he took pains to point out he agreed with in every measure.

He was a marketing specialist with a large multinational about to be transferred to work in Bombay for the same company. Our own church has a member whose husband worked for the same company. Some months later both he and my Muslim acquaintance were at the Taj Mahal hotel in Bombay when it was attacked by terrorists and they both escaped unharmed.

We should be more concerned with what unites us than with what appears to divide us !

Why Does Matter Exist?

By Anthony J. Whitehouse CS

Well we are certainly never going to answer that question if we rely on physics. If we are using the testimony of the material senses to probe the issue we are going to come up short because the physical senses are just not going to play ball on the question. The physical senses depend on matter for their manifestation so they are not going to cooperate in any rationale which unbundles their existence.

So, if we want to answer the question as to why matter exists we have to realise that the concepts we generally hold about God insist that God is infinite and omnipotent and everpresent. If God was not like this then God would not be God. But matter basically denies the nature of God by saying that matter is a somethingness besides God. And within the ambit of this pretense we can see that matter exists solely as the result of a belief in a dimension besides God.

If we hold that there is more than one dimension to life, a dimension besides the dimension of Spirit and Mind then we are going to be presented with the evidence of it i.e. matter is only the evidence our own conviction that there are two dimensions to life ; both the dimension of spirit/mind and the dimension of matter.

Herein lies to answer to our freedom from the material senses and from the exigences of material conditions: we must insist that there is only one dimension to our lives, the dimension of Spirit or God. In Deuteronomy 25:14 we find biblical authority for this monastic approach. " Thou shalt not have in thy house divers measures, a great and a small".

Obviously it does involve bit of pitched battle to stick to our guns on this. Pharaoh , or the material senses, does not like to lose it slaves. But Mrs Eddy points out that we have to work with this principle to gain our freedom. " We only have to avail ourselves of God's rule to receive His blessing, which enables us to work out our own salvation." It is clear we are not going to drown in Red sea. But we are going to have to be very determined and clear in our thinking. Even Jesus indicated that " strait is the gate and narrow is the way which leadeth unto life and few there be that find it". Matt 7:14

We can take great comfort that the material dimension to our lives is illusory because God is the only dimension of consequence. We have to operate in the dimension of goodness because the cost of not doing so is to find ourselves in hell. There is no other word capable of conveying the cost involved of not operating within the sole dimension of goodness.

" In him we live and move and have our being" as the Bible tells us, unless of course we are going to take on board the illusion of a second dimension to life.

God reigns!

By Anthony Whitehouse CS

Yes ! you will say. God does reign. But I realised this morning that we problem we face in our practice of the Science of the Christ is that the physical senses are claiming to reign as well. We seem to have been caught on the horns of a dilemma..... and a painful one at that.

But if we are to avoid the confusion " of these latter days" we have to be quite clear that God alone reigns and the senses are just myths and delusions of no consequence.

The genius of both Jesus and Mary Baker Eddy was to instinctively understand that God reigned despite all human evidence to the contrary. Their conviction about the rule of God overrode the chaos that senses were seeking to impose. In the end they had enough humility to realise that only God COULD reign. It is only in having enough humility to admit that this must be the case that we can begin to figure rightly.

For those with seemingly incurable medical conditions this approach represents a stark choice albeit a glorious one. Who is reigning here ? Is it medical opinion or is it the decree of the Divine Mind which has made everything glorious like itself ? Obviously the answer is that medical and human opinions cannot reign within thought if we are going to demonstrate this wonderful science that we have been given.

The power inherent in the sense that God reigns must mean that we can totally disregard what the physical sense are telling us. Unless we can arrive at this point no healing will occur because we are effectively allowing those senses to reign and dictate our thought and action. Yet we are told " Thou shalt have no other God's before me!"

We are helped in this endeavor by realising that the physical senses are delusional.

Certainly it takes courage and persistence but we have the wonderful examples of both Jesus and Mary Baker Eddy. They have provided the precedents for us to follow.

Within the ambit of the up and coming elections the understanding that God reigns must require that we understand that political parties do not reign and neither do individuals preside. God does. That understanding must translate into opinions being correctly formed about who best to vote for because we detect which candidate best understands this.

There is a valid argument which would say that this postulate does not really hold water because the world has been in such chaos for so long. God only rarely has made an appearance on the human stage. This is not unsurprising bearing in mind that the physical world tends to objectify human belief. As long as human belief hangs onto the delusion that the stars foretell or the spirits of our ancestors impel or the God is subject to human foibles of anger etc then this is how our world is going to operate.

But change the sense that these beliefs reign and you usher in the kingdom of heaven " so will our material theories yield to spiritual ideas , until the finite gives place to the infinite, sickness to health, sin to holiness and God's kingdom comes in earth as it is in heaven" S&H 339:22.

All you have to do is give up the idea that you live under the jurisdiction of the physical senses

The Withered Fig Tree and an Easter Message

By Stirling Watts CS        (access Stirling's Blog)

This week’s Bible Lesson from the Christian Science Quarterly addresses the subject “Are Sin, Disease, and Death Real?”.  In observance of Easter, these Scriptural selections and their correlative passages from the Christian Science textbook, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, by Mary Baker Eddy, celebrate and confirm Christ Jesus’ complete victory over death and the grave some 2000 years ago.  They also celebrate Jesus’ demonstration over all of the effects of sin, disease, and death.  An understanding of these demonstrations offers the potential of full salvation to all of humanity.  The truth and success of Jesus’ great life work culminated in his own personal victory over death, illustrated and proven by his resurrection from the grave, after which he presented to human observers the very same body which his persecutors had unsuccessfully attempted to permanently kill.

The 21^st Chapter of the Gospel of Matthew relates that five days before his crucifixion, Jesus came to the temple in Jerusalem and found it corrupted by the evils of rabbinical authority.  The priests were profiting from the very people to whom they were supposed to minister, by exchanging their foreign currencies for silver and gold at unfair rates, and in turn further profiting themselves personally by selling doves for the traditional Jewish rite of sacrifice – all right there within the holy temple!  Angered by this injustice, Jesus overthrew the tables of the money exchangers and of all involved in this illicit activity.  Hepurged the temple of its abusive materialistic activities.   Of course this angered the rabbis, and they were further enraged when Jesus thereafter set about teaching in that very temple which he had just purged, healing the multitudes, the sick and sinning who came to absorb the divine Love which he  literally exuded in the process of healing them all completely and absolutely of all of their infirmities.  The rabbis were not able to do such great works and were selfishlyenraged by them.  How dare Jesus, a common carpenter with no priestly heritage, eject the elite from their very own temple, and then proceed to assume the task of ministering to the people!  On top of this outrage, Jesus was able toheal, whereas they could not!

That evening after healing many,  he left the temple and lodged at Bethany.  In the morning as he was returning to the city, he was hungry and encountered a fig tree.  Matthew 21: 19,20  relates “And when he saw a fig tree in the way, he came to it, and found nothing thereon, but leaves only, and said unto it, Let no fruit grow on thee henceforward for ever.  And presently the fig tree withered away.  And when the disciples saw it, they marveled, saying, How soon is the fig tree withered away!”

It is often asked how and why Jesus caused the fig tree to wither away.  It seems at first almost contrary to all of the positive healing actions which Jesus so famously practiced, so that even those familiar with Jesus’ healing works are sometimes confused by this curse.  The purging of the temple which had just occurred the previous day sheds some light on Jesus’ frame of mind when he caused the fig tree to wither.  He had just witnessed the fruitless activities of corruption going on in the temple in Jerusalem, and had then purged it of its fruitless nature, and then set about accomplishing the higher task of healing the sick in the temple.  It was externally a beautiful temple with a great and wonderful purpose, but that purpose had been exploited by its rabbinical authority.   Jesus then set about illustrating that the beauty of the temple is not in its representation or its material grandeur, not in the piousness of its rabbis and priests, but in the spiritual activity of God’s healing love.  This he demonstrated by healing those who had come to see him at Jerusalem.

What was Jesus thinking of this fig tree?  Like the temple, it appeared to be beautiful, but was corrupt in nature.  Its appearance was a false appearance.  It was producing no fruit.  Like the temple pretending to be a structure of God through its glorious appearance, where was the love and good in the temple?  The fig tree looked nice too, but where was its fruit?

Jesus thought continually as the Christ.  Where mortal men saw imperfection and materiality, Jesus’ Christly thought saw only perfection and spirituality.  Although, in order to heal them, Jesus must have been aware of the mortal presentation of discord, sin, disease, and all of the related etceteras of evil, he never recognized them as having any valid authority.  He saw sin, disease, death – anything not in consonance with the constant law of God, as invalid.  He understood the perfect spiritual character of everything which appeared to hisperfect consciousness to be the only valid reality.  This deep ability to perceive the spiritual nature in everything brought the manifestation of that perfection to the consciousness of everyone in his presence.  This was the scientific basis of his healing works, and the scientific basis of the withering of the non-bearing fig tree.

Regarding both the temple and the fig tree: that which has a holy purpose must also have a holy effect. God being the one and only perfect Cause, what that Cause knows must also have a perfect effect, because divine Cause and effect are spiritual law.  Therefore a fig tree bearing no fruit is the appearance of an incomplete effect, and would have to be the reflection of an imperfect Cause.  Jesus knew that the only Cause that exists is a perfect Cause.  The non-bearing fig tree was therefore of no value. The non-bearing tree was not following the law of God’s Cause, and must therefore be a mentally invalid representation of a tree. Jesus always saw the spiritual reality in every one of his observations. A non-bearing tree would not be able to reproduce and grow another fig tree, and would therefore not be representing God’s law of eternal unfoldment, and the non-bearing fig tree was therefore invalid.  Its true invalidity was instantly experienced by those in Jesus’ immediate mental realm.  The fig tree took on its true appearance – withered and dead.

Jesus perfect perception of spiritual reality as perceived through his Christ nature must have been along the lines of  Genesis 1: 11 which says:  ”And God said, let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth” and it was so”, and Genesis 1:31 which says  “And God saw every thing that he had made and behold it was very good”.

The key phrase is “whose seed is in itself”. The fig tree must live by divine law!  That which reflects God’s perfect and consistent law of causation must logically and naturally be perfectly mimicked as God’s identical effect.

As in every other instance of what appear to human sense as a miracle, Jesus did not really perform miracles per se.  To lower human sense, which cannot comprehend their meanings, the appearance of spiritual action often appears to be miraculous.  Jesus demonstrated a higher understanding of what constitutes reality, than that which is shared by common humanity.  He brought to human manifestation the perfect reality which his perfect Christ-thinking presented to consciousness, his own, and of those who were near him.

Jesus’ ultimate demonstration for humanity began to unfold four days after this fig tree incident.  He had set out to raise the spiritual consciousness of the world, but his mission had been misunderstood by the rabbinical powers which ruled the society of his day.  Following the betrayal of one of his own followers, Jesus’ supposedly pious priestly persecutors unjustly murdered him on the cross.  But his superior sense of spiritual being proved to the world that a perfect mastery of the perception of the ever-presence of Love is the master of hatred.  Armed with perfect understanding of man’s inseparability from God’s love,  Jesus was able to defeat the power of death, which was previously supposed to be a fixed fact.

Mary Baker Eddy writes on page 43 (ibid)   “Jesus’ last proof was the highest, the most convincing, the most profitable to his students.  The malignity of brutal persecutors, the treason and suicide of his betrayer, were overruled by divine Love to the glorification of the man and of the true idea of God, which Jesus’ persecutors had mocked and tried to slay.  The final demonstration of the truth which Jesus taught, and for which he was crucified, opened a new era for the world.  Those who slew him to stay his influence perpetuated and extended it.”

We owe Jesus endless respect and honor in all time to come.  His understanding of the inseparable relationship between God and man was at such an advanced human level that he could have avoided the entire ordeal of capture, torture, and crucifixion.  But he demonstrated his own love for mankind by making this ultimate sacrifice of his mortal life for the salvation of the world.  Mrs. Eddy says on page 51 (ibid) “…but he (Jesus) allowed men to attempt the destruction of the mortal body that he might furnish the proof of immortal life.”  As Jesus is quoted to have said in the Gospel of John 15:14  “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends”

Easter greetings to all!

God has no sense of challenge

By Anthony Whitehouse CS

One of the great illuminations of spiritual sense comes from the realisation that the Mind of God experiences no sense of challenge. The human mind often has a sense of challenge. Money, stress, illness all represent a challenge to the human mind.



So what is the real challenge when we have a problem? The problem or the belief in challenge? Careful consideration of the issue will allow thought to realize that the belief in challenge is the actual issue to be dealt with. 

The Mind of God is a challenge free zone. Does not Mrs. Eddy tells us that “There are no contests for the Gabriel of His presence”. 

It is interesting to realize that the word challenge and the word calumny have the same root. That really takes some thinking about.

So rather than thinking that we have a hill to climb, it really does makes sense to realize that there is no hill. That also takes some thinking about. 

Evil or error always has to appear as a challenge. It has to be a Goliath. Unless it appears as a challenge it will not be taken seriously. So we must not stand aghast at nothingness. Rather than standing aghast we must just take on board the divine realization: we exist in a challenge free zone. 

We just cannot have spiritual sense or a conception of the what the Divine Mind is like unless, like the Divine Mind, we have a cognizance of there being nothing “ out there “ to give us a hard time. God, is the Only Entity so the Divine Mind, the All in All has no sense of challenge. We, as His image and likeness must reflect the same sense of being.

Your freedom cannot be compromised

By Anthony Whitehouse CS

It is probably clear to anyone that if one had a perfect sense of liberty and freedom one would be in the kingdom of heaven. That sense of freedom would involve a sense of freedom from poverty, sin, compromise, error, malice etc., so that irrespective of the challenge before us we would never lose that sense of freedom. We would be in that place which was totally free of any sense of being constrained by anything. We would have that sense of heaven which freedom entails.

So if we are going to experience the opposite of that sense of total freedom i.e. hell, then evil, personal sense, error etc., is obviously going to come up with a set of circumstances which seem to compromise freedom. Usually it looks like an incurable disease, or an insurmountable problem. But actually the issue we really have to deal with is neither the insurmountable problem nor the incurable disease; it is simply the sense that our freedom can be compromised. It cannot be!

In fact this issue is the sum total of the challenge in Divine Science, because it applies equally to men and women of all religions and all works of life.

It is in fact a law of God, a principle of Divine Science that there is no such thing as compromise and lack of freedom because the nature of God is infinity and infinity is an integral component of freedom which is incapable of being constrained.

However we cannot really take this freedom on board until we see how good evil and error are at presenting scenarios which seek to fetter that sense of freedom. Take for example someone living in a deprived neighborhood, living on a pension and facing a health issue. What is the real issue here? It is not really the circumstances but the whole construct of the scenario is saying to that individual, “You have nowhere to go! You have no freedom, you are constrained. You cannot escape this horror.” The mesmerism is complete. But what is compromised here is not really the individual. What is compromised is the sense of freedom and this is actually of far greater consequence than what appears as the physical constraints, because a sense of freedom is one of the primal qualities of Spirit, God. So if our sense of freedom has been compromised we are effectively cut-off from God and of the two challenges that is by far the greater sin. If we lose our sense of freedom we have effectively lost our sense of God: that is hell and purgatory, all rolled up in one.

So, if we are going to be effective healers, effective spiritual scientists it is critical we never allow thought to lose that sense of freedom. We need to be very wary of any circumstances which are trying to tell us that we are compromised.

What is so interesting in this whole issue is that the word free comes from an Indo-European root meaning “to love”. So, it is not hard to see that God, love MUST necessarily involve a sense of freedom. It obviously follows that if we lose a sense of freedom our ability to love is compromised at the same time. Neither can we say that we love God if we entertain the idea that we, as the expression of God, can have our sense of freedom compromised.

It is also true to say that we can never have any sense of joy without an inherent sense of freedom. How can we entertain joy if we feel that we can be taken hostage by fortune? Belief in the vagaries of chance would certainly do that.
Our sense of freedom must also necessarily entail that others cannot have their freedom curtailed either. One can imagine walking down the street and seeing someone with a disability and passing the thought “ There is no freedom here”. In today’s current climate of hedonism one could also be forgiven for entertaining the idea that others have been mesmerized into forsaking church worship or their freedom to worship God has been curtailed. But that would involve us in entertaining thoughts that mankind is NOT free to worship God. Nothing could be farther from the truth. We cannot call ourselves children of God and entertain any notion that man is not free to do his duty otherwise our own sense of freedom ( and love ) is necessarily compromised.

It often appears to us that others are behaving in a loveless and hateful manner towards us. We can turn these traits on their head by insisting that that these people are both free of such unloving traits and their ability or freedom to act in a loving, intelligent and cooperative manner cannot be compromised. It is our sense of freedom which heals the situation.

Confusion: The John the Baptist syndrome!

By Anthony Whitehouse CS

If there is one personality in the Bible who behaves in an odd manner it has to be John the Baptist. His mother and the mother of Jesus are related, he prophesies the coming of the Messiah, he baptizes and prepares thousands for the coming of Christ but when Christ turns up and even after he recognizes Jesus as the Christ, he has a crisis of confidence and cannot follow him.

How could that possibly happen ? Even Jesus kept sending him proof of his healings as we find in Matthew 11:4 “ Go and shew John again those things which you do see and hear”.

What weapon did error use in this instance ? The answer is the weapon of confusion. And it is this sense of confusion which is the mist which went up from the earth and watered the ground. Confusion is the mingling of good and evil, the lack of clarity which comes from having more than one Mind and more than one creation.

So are we going to fall into the same trap as John the Baptist? I am a great believer in learning from other peoples mistakes. In this instance I think it behooves us to learn from one of the greatest spiritual blunders in history. Interestingly Moses made the same mistake. He never got to the promised land either because he allowed himself to become confused about the existence of God and the validity of His promises.

When John the Baptist allowed himself to become confused about the reality of the Christ in his experience , we see the result only too clearly. He lost his head. In fact his story is a terrible condemnation of allowing ourselves to become confused. The issue here is not really one of doubt but of confusion. We can be in a position where we do not really doubt the creation and perfection of God but we can be led into a position where we are so confused by human events that we lose the mental clarity which allows us to insist and experience the perfection and creation of God as our own reality.

Irrespective of how painful a realization it may be I believe it is essential to realize that error is very good at sowing confusion. The parable of the tares and the wheat witness this phenomenon. It will present us with a so called insoluble problem and we end up totally confused by the situation! Immediately we lose our spiritual clarity and focus. We are persuaded there is more than one creation and more than one Mind. Confounding confusion has to be the result and such result involves our exclusion from the kingdom. Our leader tells us “Man is harmonious when governed by Soul “ but that statement will lose its power if we become confused by a problem.

So the answer must be to always maintain that intense spiritual clarity that is never confused. In order to have this clarity we must totally deny the reality of sin, sickness and death. If we accept error then confusion must result. God warns us against eating the fruit of the tree of good and evil (and even touching it!) but we do not heed the warning. Why? Because the real fruit of this tree is confusion and we have not really recognized its distressing effects.

Jesus’ great strength was that he was never confused by any human situation and he was certainly never confused about his identity as the image and likeness of God. Mrs. Eddy refers to the blessings which came about as a result of both this spiritual clarity and absence of confusion when she writes:

No. 36:12-26 The real Christ was unconscious of matter, of sin, disease, and death, and was conscious only of God, of good, of eternal Life, and harmony. Hence the human Jesus had a resort to his higher self and relation to the Father, and there could find rest from unreal trials in the conscious reality and royalty of his being, — holding the mortal as unreal, and the divine as real. It was this retreat from material to spiritual selfhood which recuper- ated him for triumph over sin, sickness, and death. Had he been as conscious of these evils as he was of God, wherein there is no consciousness of human error, Jesus could not have resisted them; nor could he have conquered the malice of his foes, rolled away the stone from the sepulchre, and risen from human sense to a higher con- cept than that in which he appeared at his birth.

So the great challenge we face as Christians and devotees of The Way is whether we are going to make the same mistakes as John the Baptist and Moses? It really is the difference between a stance of mind which says I have a problem to solve and wondering how I am going to solve it ( the stance of confusion ) and the stance of Mind which insists that “ Now are we the sons of God , the separation has never taken place, God reigns, all is perfect now !”

Either supremacy or anarchy

Anthony Whitehouse CS

Christian Science presents you with a rather stark choice but one that we have to make. It falls out of the realisation that God is supreme, that there is no other power and no other state of affairs than absolute perfection and complete harmony. This is the nature of God and His nature is supreme.. i.e above all and totally pervasive. The problem for the human mind is that it suffers from the belief that this is not actually true and as a result it experiences anarchy. I must add that the delusion that God is not actually supreme can only exist as a delusion. It can never be a reality. Does not Mrs Eddy say " All that really exists is the Divine Mind and its idea... "

So this is our choice. Either we take on board and understand that God ( Love, truth , serenity , peace etc) really are supreme or we must live with the opposite ... anarchy. When seen in this llight we realise we don't actually have a choice.

It may not be that we are able to totally digest the full impact of this realisation but this is not important. What is critical is that we see how important to destroy the belief in something less than supremacy and work to establish the sense of God's supremacy. We can then usher in the millenium albeit 12 years late !

Commentary on the 91st Psalm and its Poetic Adaptation as a Hymn

By Stirling Watts CS

These inspiring words are adapted from those of Nahum Tate and Nicholas Brady, two Irishmen who were adherents to King William, to whom Brady was a chaplain, circa 1700 A.D. This text also appears as the words to Hymns 99 and 100 in The Christian Science Hymnal:

He that hath God his guardian made
Shall dwell beneath th’Almighty’s shade;
Thus of the Lord I now will say,
He is my fortress, shield and stay,
My God; in Him I will confide
And in His secret place abide.

His tender love and watchful care
Shall free thee from the fowler’s snare.
He over thee His wings shall spread,
To cover thy unguarded head,
And from the noisome pestilence
His truth shall be they strong defense.

He gives His angels charge o’er thee,
No evil therefore shalt thou see.
Dwelling within His secret place,
Thou shalt behold His power and grace;
Thy refuge shall be God most high,
See His salvation ever nigh.

This poem, as does the 91st Psalm itself, tells of us of God’s ever at-hand, permanent, protective, and healing power. We can all partake of witnessing that Truth and feeling the healing hand of His Love when we mentally rise in prayer above the false testimony of the evil called disease, which deceitfully claims to reside with us. God, good, being ALL, evil would claim an impossible victory for itself.  Its supposed selfhood can only reside in an imaginary realm OUTSIDE of God’s infinity. Where would such a place be? To God, that place would only be a dream realm. How can we get to a place outside of an infinity of Love? Where is the barrier of infinity, an infinity filled with Love? We can never really be in such a place, but we as humans can certainly entertain the false conviction that we are. Anyone who has ever awakened from a frightening nightmare knows the feeling of the sudden realization, that what we were convinced was threatening us, was not really in the realm of reality. In the same sense, we as humans live in a conviction of an environment called human consciousness. This can often seem like a nightmare. When we at least partially awake from that state of false conviction through prayer, our real and perfect spiritual state becomes more apparent. Healing will feel much like the awakening from a nightmare.

Through sincere, holy, and truly uplifting prayer, we always win, in spite of frightening human appearances and presentations of outcome which defy God’s goodness.

The Impossibility of Malpractice – Enhanced Version

By Stirling Watts CS

Malpractice is the accomplishment of undesirable or evil results carried out by human beings.   God, good, comprises all that exists, and is the source of all true and valid action.  We, men and women, are the children of God, His image and likeness.  God, being spiritual, that image and likeness must also be spiritual, and therefore is not material.  To feel the Spirit which we actually are and express, we must think and exist from this spiritual state of consciousness, rather than from the human state of consciousness from which we have learned to be accustomed to think and act.   In every day life we are not accustomed to thinking and acting purely spiritually.  In order to feel our spiritual nature, we must learn how todrop our mortal concepts and become Christ-like in our present consciousness.    In every day human life, in which we tend to forget about the constant influence of God, we generally think and exist in a mental daze called the human consciousness.  In this human realm we believe ourselves to be thinking our own independent human thoughts, and we falsely perceive our existence to be within a physical realm.  It is only in this mentally and humanly created physical realm of consciousness, which we falsely consider to be our reality, where malpractice can seem to take place.  In the realm of thought which constitutes all that is permanent, timeless, and eternal in nature, only good unfolds and can unfold.  This is because the realm of Spirit, God, is infinite self- containment.  There isnothing else but God within the infinite realm of Spirit.    Though human consciousness is only partially aware of the spiritual realm, it is actually all that ispresent!   Only in the deceptive aspects of consciousness – which God is not capable of knowing due to their erroneous natures – can activity seem to take place which is contrary to God.  The objective of Christian Science is to help man to align his thought with the spiritual reality, and thereby reject evil from experience by making man conscious of its illegitimacy.  In this way, spiritual reality can be seen and recognized in the midst of human consciousness, and disease and discord thereby indentified and removed from experience, mentally, not physically.

In Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, author and discoverer of the divine rules for healing as practiced by Christ Jesus,  Mary Baker Eddy, explainshow to take a stand for Christ-healing.  On page 275: line 6  she tells us  “The starting point of divine Science is that God, Spirit, is All-in all, and that there is no other might nor Mind, – that God is Love, and therefore He is divine Principle.”  We are to begin at this starting point, and never veer off course.  This was the starting point of Christ Jesus’ thought, and the mental standpoint from which Jesus was able to heal, and from which he taught his disciples and followers to heal.  If we are to be faithful followers, we are to strive to do as he commanded.  The action of God is also good, and is never less than good.  In Christian Science, we must be constantly aware that  “God, good is All-in all, and that there in no other might nor Mind”, and we must never stray from this premise .  Keeping our thought carefully on this path, constantly and deliberately, brings an awareness of the ever-present availability of God, good, and the natural continual unfolding of God’s good.   This awareness overrules any assumed foreknowledge of evil.  Malpractice is a word consisting of the prefix, “mal”, and the word, “practice”.  The prefix “mal” signifies evil intent.  Thus, malpractice is an action carried out with an evil intent.   Remember, let us not stray from the opening premise that God,good, is all that exists.  How then can an action of ill-intent be carried out, within this one and only infinite realm of good?  It cannot!  Deception, evil, insists that it can.  The very nature of the word deception indicates that it is a lie.  Ill-intent, malpractice, deceives the human mind into believing in its validity in human experience.  Remember again the opening premise, that God, good, is All-in all.  Evil seems to be successful whenever it convinces the observer of its validity through a lie.  Of evil, the devil, Christ  Jesus himself said that “he is a liar and the father of it”.

Malpractice, then, is evil’s attempt to stop what is natural,  – that is, good. Malpractice can only be carried out with either a mistaken, an ignorant,  a hidden, or a wicked purpose.   God’s spiritual and perfect man, the likeness of God in both form and action, is incapable of malpractice.  Both malpractice and the one who malpractices are therefore a lie; for to malpractice is outside of the capability of God’s likeness in action.  But evil would present itself as valid and powerful in every avenue of our experience.   We must stand guarding our human thought, and ensure that evil is identified when it lies to us , and rejected before its deception appears to us to us falsely as reality.  Praying to be assured that mental malpractice cannot harm us when either asleep or awake should be a part of our daily self preparing activities.

In extending this spiritual understanding of the powerlessness of malpractice, in prayer we can also work to be assured  that there are no real victims of malpractice in the eyes of our absolute God.  Rather, there are only mistakenlyapparent victims, seen in the eyes of human, but not divine thought.

Any appearance of disease or any appearance of any discordant condition is in fact the malpractice of evil.  Remember never to stray from the initial premise, that God, good, is All-in-all!  Discordant conditions contrary to good have no abiding place within a universe of infinite self-contained good.  We experience disease in human consciousness only in proportion as we mistakenly allowourselves to be controlled by their mistaken appearances.

Consider, for example, the fear of a child to whom the meaning of a Halloween mask has not been explained.  The poor ignorant child believes some sinister evil being to be behind the mask, and may become very alarmed when he sees what he does not understand.  When the child learns that that mask is only a false cover and not the real nature of the person he sees, he begins to recognize the mask as a non-threatening disguise, placed over the face of a person whom he has already correctly learned to be good.  By careful observation, the child may gain some sense that the man behind the mask is not threatening, and his fear will lessen even before he receives the full explanation of the mask.

This simple example of fear to which we all can relate actually explains the nature of all of human fears and discordant conditions.  Even as adults, until we begin to learn to think from God’s perspective rather than from the human view, we continue to be frightened by a host of false appearances.  Because we allow ourselves to reside in a mental universe which regards our existence to be continually threatened by external and evil forces, we  continue along the same mental track as the frightened child.  We incorrectly believe ourselves to have overcome the childish stage of being frightened of powerless threats.  Understanding our real spiritual nature, we discover that we have the power to rise above that experience.  When we remain mentally attuned to applying the initial factual premise, namely, that God, good, is All-in-all, it becomes apparent that within the infinite realm of God, good, nothing actually exists, or has the capacity to exist,  which can harm our being.  It is only a sense of fear which alarms us.  As humans, we are, however, quite convinced of our vulnerable nature, which we falsely confirm through observations of the frightened material senses – senses which report conditions contrary to the initial factual premise of the complete allness of God, good.   This description accurately fits the fear of the appearance of a frightening disease as well as it fits the fear of the child afraid of a harmless mask.

The disease, when viewed from a higher and more spiritual sense of the absolute realm of God where no evil exists, is also only another form of a mask.  A perfect spiritual man, the image and reflection of God’s perfection, is behind the ugly disguise of disease, or sin.  When we behold the diseased or sinful person, we are beholding only a false mask of disease or sin, which appears to our interpretation as a diseased and imperfect person, afflicted by evil. We are afraid of what wefalsely interpret to be the entity of disease, and we react to it with fear.  The stronger the fear, the more pronounced is our false belief in its entity.  By mentally attaching the ugly mask to the person, falsely believing it to be a part of their identity, we falsely believe ourselves to be looking at a diseased person.  What we are in fact beholding is a distorted and false representation of God’sperfect man!  The real and spiritual entity, the perfect reality of that person isalways present.  Man’s real identity, after all, can only be the perfect image and reflection of God.  Remember, we are not to leave the premise that nothingunlike good is valid where God is All-in-all.   This realm of Spirit is all-inclusive – there IS nothing else but God, good, and his perfect ideas!

Recently a Christian Scientist returned home from a day at work and found himself to be in a terrible state of digestive pain and general discomfort.  The symptoms he experienced were identical to the flu symptoms which had been discussed in the workplace by his coworkers that day, but seemingly much worse.  They were all frightened of what had been said to be a “flu-bug going around”.  Although our Scientist friend always strove to keep his thoughts spiritually clear in the presence of such discussions, he realized that although he had made an effort to keep the supremacy of God uppermost in his own thought, he had  mistakenly allowed his consciousness to falsely accept the symptoms of flu as a possible reality for his friends.  This oversight rendered our Scientist friend’s consciousness susceptible to a partial belief in the lie of evil through a sort of “back door” entry point.  Erroneous thought had snuck past the sentry of his mind.   He usually was capable of healing such oversights alone, but the intensity of the pain and debilitating symptoms had quickly escalated to a point of apparent emergency.  Fearful that he was losing consciousness from the pains, he phoned a Christian Science practitioner for prayerful treatment.  The treatment consisted of the mental application in prayer of the statement “The starting point of divine Science is that God, Spirit, is All-in all, and that there is no other might nor Mind, – that God is Love, and therefore He is divine Principle.”  The recitation and powerful confirmation of that simple Christ-affirming statement regarding God’s Allness brought about an instantaneous realization of perfection.  In seconds, the claim of flu and the intense stomach pains vanished entirely.

On page 37: line 27 of the same book, we are told “Hear these imperative commands: ‘Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which in heaven is perfect!’ “Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature!’ “Heal the sick!’ “

If we are truly faithful to Jesus and desire to be like him, we must go and do as he did, in the ways that he commanded us.  It will seldom feel humanly easy!  But this is our true Christian duty.  When we humbly begin mentally where Jesus taught us to begin, and stay there consistently, recognizing and acknowledging no power contrary to or conflicting with God, good, we will find ourselves armed with the power of God.  Every disease, all forms of sin, every human conflict, will then dissolve into their native nothingness in our consciousness.