"Why hast thou forsaken me?"

By H J B Corderoy

Brisbane, Australia

When a physical healing eludes us or a loved one dies we are prone to ask, as Jesus did on the cross, “why hast thou forsaken me O god?”  This was a momentary lapse in Jesus’ communication with the Father. It is a perfectly human reaction and therein lies the answer. But more about that later.

Jesus used healings as a way of getting the attention of the people who were steeped in the ways of the world. He hoped that as a result of seeing these so called miracles people would be drawn to seeking the Truth that he was teaching. These healings were the ultimate human proof of the Truth that he was teaching. The sole purpose of his earthly life, resurrection and ascension was to reveal to us the truth about our real existence as the spiritual ideas of God. He taught us how to know God thereby unlocking the path to our redemption and final adoption by God. The purpose of our life on this earth and in the eternal realm of divine Mind is to understand God. What we do not understand in this life will remain for us to work out in the eternal hereafter.

When we seek a healing through prayer the important thing that we gain is a better understanding of God and our relationship with him. The healing is an added blessing. ‘Seek ye first the kingdom of God and all these things shall be added to you’. If you do not experience a healing do not despair. You have started on the path to understanding God. Your success in this endeavour will depend on the degree of your spiritual understanding of God up until that time.

The more you study and pray to understand God, the more you express an overwhelming love of God, the greater will be your spiritual and physical rewards. Each step you take in this process of understanding will improve your ability to meet the next challenge. God only requires of you a demonstration of your present understanding.

If a person passes before they are healed, that person Is no worse or better off as a result of their passing.They will have to continue their spiritual development in the hereafter from the point where they left it at the time of their passing.Those that are left behind will naturally feel a sense of loss. But they too will have gained spiritually from their prayer. There is no need for those left behind to feel any guilt because their prayers apparently failed nor any anger because God allowed their loved one to fall ill and to die. Both these human reactions are perfectly understandable.

Although the physical body is dead, there has been no death or loss of the spiritual attributes or body of thoughts which make up the real being of your loved one.Those spiritual thoughts remain in existence in the realm of divine Mind as they have since the beginning. The individual’s body of spiritual thoughts are eternal and will be recognisable to us when we too enter the realm of divine Mind.

Why then did a loving God allow this to happen?

It happens because we are living under the law of mortal mind and not the Spirit. It happens when we drop our guard for a moment and allow ungodly thoughts and suggestions to enter our consciousness.

“For the law of the Spirit of the life of Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death". (Rom. 8:2) So, God did not cause the accident, the sickness or the death. It is a consequence of living under the law of mortal mind. God knows only light; only good. (I John 1:5)  God 'is of purer eyes than to behold evil’. (Habakkuk) 

God has nothing to do with the material world and its woes. ‘Every good gift and every perfect gift cometh down from the Father of light with whom in no variableness nor shadow of turning’. No evil, disharmony, or imperfection comes down from God.These accidents and illnesses we experience are all the consequence of listening to the babble of the mortal minds around us.

The sickness and death that we see around us is the result of the miasma of many mortal minds seeking to dominate each other. Mortal mind dreamed up the disease and then passed it from one receptive mind to another. What we failed to do in the first instance was to guard against this involuntary mesmerism by mortal mind. Secondly, our understanding of the Truth was not sufficiently well enough developed to deny the power of mortal mind which is continually being reinforced by the mortal thoughts of those around us. In the case of children, or those in a coma, it is their love-ones who must supply this protection until their spiritual understanding is sufficient to the cause.

When faced with this seemingly overpowering weight of false opinion we cry out 'Lord I believe, help thou my unbelief’. The doubt we feel when faced by this opposition is yet another ploy by mortal mind to hold us in subjugation. Hold steadfastly to the Truth and you will succeed.

How then did mortal mind dream up these illnesses in the first place when God is supposed to be omnipotent? It all happened in the Garden of Eden. At that point in his physical evolution man decided that he was intelligent enough to know the difference between good and evil. He decided that he was a god in his own right and that he no longer needed the one true God in his life. By his own choice, mortal man gave up his spiritual birthright. He was no longer God's child but became man's child. This was when mortal mind first entered on the scene. Mortal mind decided that it created man when all it really did was procreate a physical body.

The real and eternal man was created by God as his spiritual likeness.That man ‘lives and moves and has his being’ in divine Mind as a perfect idea of God. The realisation of the existence of the spiritual man remained hidden until the advent of Jesus Christ. Through Christ's death and resurrection, mankind was offered the opportunity of adoption by God: ‘but ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba , Father’. This is how we may regain our birthright as the child of God which we lost in the Garden of Eden.

At that moment in the Garden of Eden the evolution of the material man and the spiritual one parted company. Since then the material man has sought out many inventions some of which are good but many of them bad. Even in today's world we face individual ‘Garden of Eden’ moments when our human ego clashes with the Divine.The sickness and unhappiness we see in the world today is as  a result of the multiplicity of mortal minds all competing with one another; all claiming to be god-like. 'Though there be many that are called gods whether in heaven or in earth…. But to us there is but one God’

The teachings, healings, and the resurrection of Jesus revealed to us the Truth about our real being and the path to our spiritual evolution in the eternal life. Of course the Garden of Eden is only an allegory for the time when mankind chose to be independent of the one and only true God and to deny His supremacy.

Has God forsaken us? If we bought ‘two sparrows for a farthing’ and one of them died we might say 'its not worth worrying about’. Not so with God. He will never forsake his spiritual children. In the spiritual realm ‘every hair on our head’ is precious to him!

'For the law of the Spirit of the life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death’. If we live under God's law we shall be free of mortal mind and its diseases and death.

Returning now to the illusion that we have not been physically healed. I say illusion because illness and death do not exist in Gods realm. Healing is part of the process of spiritualisation leading us to a better understanding and obedience to God.The physical body obeys the mind in control of it whether that mind be divine or mortal. Sin, disease, and death are concepts of mortal  mind intended to keep us subjugated. Every step we take in seeking to understand God is a spiritual healing in itself. Each of these steps is far more important to our eternal life than any physical healing welcome as that healing may be from a human point of view.

How do we know if we are controlled by mortal mind? If we are primarily concerned with our own ego, our status, our wealth, our health, or material things then we are not listening to God. We are leaving the door ajar to suggestions by mortal mind. We are allowing thoughts of ill-health and disharmony into our consciousness and our being. Admit only good thoughts to your consciousness and all will be well.

God has not and will not forsake us. Rather, it is we who have forsaken Him by making a god out of mortal mind and we are suffering the consequences. We have involuntarily allowed mortal mind to govern us hence we are subject to random sicknesses, early deaths and the loss of eternal life. Far from forsaking us, God, out of his perfect love for us, has provided a means of redemption of our eternal life through Christ Jesus.

What wonderful gift of love the Father hath bestowed upon us. We can never be thankful enough. “What manner of love hath God bestowed upon us that we should be called his children”.