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.
