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Global TeamTheological wrestlings
by Margaret Rogers
Hi Margaret,
Thank you for letting me email you with my thoughts and questions about Christian Science and where it fits into my life. This being my senior year in college, I think a lot about the future and where I want to go with my life. A big part of that is the question of whether Christian Science is something I want to include and focus on.
I have been extremely grateful to have been exposed to Christian Science because I think it has broadened the way I look at the world—inviting a spiritual view into my perception. Even at the end of college and while going to an extremely secular school, I am convinced that a spiritual discipline and focus is the best way to live one’s life and the truth.
But I have reached a bit of a wall with Christian Science mainly over the issue of healing. This is, of course, a bit problematic because healing is the main focus of Christian Science. I understand that healing can be both mental and physical, but I just don’t understand why there is a focus on physical healing from Mary Baker Eddy and current Christian Scientists.
First of all, I have always felt uneasy when I read or hear others say that there is no material reality. I am quite sure that I am, at least in part, living in a material reality. This does not mean that the spiritual should not be given more energy or appreciation, but I have always been frustrated by a denial of the material world. When I say my ankle hurts and someone says that that is not real, I don’t know where to go from there. I feel like that is where the conversation stops because I just can’t swallow that statement. Maybe I am misunderstanding the word reality. But I do feel physical pain and I think there must be some reality in that. This reality may be temporary and misleading, but I can’t just say it isn’t real and be done with it. How do I balance the material and the spiritual? I am really searching for a better understanding than just “the physical isn’t real.”
Secondly, when I think about healing in Christian Science, I have to ask myself why we don’t go to doctors. It feels so ridiculous to be bringing this up because I always thought that when people who aren’t Christian Scientists focus on the doctor situation, it was such a short-sided and shallow view of the religion. But I would really like to understand this better.
If the human body is nothing to worry about or be affected by, why do we agonize over physical healing? Why is it out of line with Christian Science to take a pill, fix something simple, and move on? When I take science classes at school and understand more and more about my body, I am less and less impressed by the body or worried about it. There are lots and lots of little things that can go wrong in the body and lots of things that can go right, but it’s just my body and not my entire self. I think that all the focus on healing in the Christian Science Sentinel glorifies those who get better and I always wonder what it is implying about those who don’t.
Ultimately, I am struggling with how Christian Science deals with death. I feel like the focus of physical healing against all odds makes us susceptible to a feeling of failure when someone dies. People close to me have died and people all around the world are dying, but I don’t really think God has much to do with it. I think it’s just the human experience and we can’t get overwhelmed by it, but we also can’t deny it.
I know that the way I am thinking about these issues is with a focus on the problems I have with the way Christian Science frames them. But I think I’m at a bit of a stand still and would like a fresh way to think about healing and spirituality. Although, right now I have some disagreements with these issues, I am trying to identify them to work through them. Any thoughts that you have would be much appreciated. Or if you have any questions about what I’m trying to articulate I can try to do a better job.
Thanks, Margaret.
Dear …,
It’s important and natural that you ask these questions. I’ve wrestled with them and still do in some ways, and I find I have to keep refreshing my own answers. I don’t think that’s bad, but rather the way we grow in understanding. Here are some thoughts, though by no means comprehensive answers.
The main focus of Christian Science isn’t physical healing, however much it may be presented that way. Mary Baker Eddy wrote:
Healing physical sickness is the smallest part of Christian Science. It is only the bugle-call to thought and action, in the higher range of infinite goodness. The emphatic purpose of Christian Science is the healing of sin… (Rudimental Divine Science, p.22)
So what is sin? Certainly all the obviously evil, hurtful things people do. But to Mrs. Eddy and most other great spiritual teachers that I’ve read, sin means something larger—it’s believing in a mistaken view of reality. The wrong sense of reality and God leads to greed, hate, selfishness, murder, and all suffering. So the deep teachings say the key to freedom and happiness is to attain realization, or live in accord with reality that isn’t apparent to the physical senses.
I’ll get back to the place of healing sickness, but first I’d like to address the question of what reality is. Christian Science defines it as God, Truth, Love—and everything that expresses them. Gandhi also said Truth and Love are God, and he was willing to give his life for truth, equality, and mercy, as have many others. (Which raises the question, is truth more important than life, or is truth itself life?)
When Mrs. Eddy had her enlightenment, she saw life as wholly spiritual and good—no matter or evil in it. But it was more than just a wonderful vision—it had the practical effect of healing her body. She couldn’t forget that. What did that healing imply? Did it mean anyone could be freed of pain and disease thru a realization of spiritual being? Once she became impassioned with the vision that freedom from suffering and evil (beliefs of material reality) were possible for everyone, she couldn’t give up on it—however big the opposition from the established ways of thinking. She saw the basic enslavement of humanity as the belief that matter is the substance and controller of life and that it causes suffering.
We can’t follow someone else’s vision of reality blindly. It has to feel honest and speak to our heart more than other views. If we keep listening, questioning, and trying to live truthfully, we will gain insight. If a particular teaching such as Christian Science seems nearest truth to us, we strive to understand and follow it even though we can’t prove it all at present.
Why does it matter how we heal the body? I like the explanation that healing is an effect of understanding reality, not the purpose of it. We seek to find God because something attracts us to making our lives more unselfed and spiritually focused. I believe that attraction indicates that we are spiritual just like our source, so we don’t feel satisfied for long in a material sense of life.
The focus of Christian Science is drawing closer to truth. Mrs. Eddy learned that as you do that, the lie that matter contains and sustains life stops controlling you. As your sense of truth changes from matter to Spirit, healing occurs, because the physical body and universe are constructs of our present beliefs about reality. As those beliefs give place to more understanding that we’re actually eternal spiritual beings now, the body changes and approximates more of the freedom and harmony of Spirit.
As you’ve noted, people can get things backward and talk and/or act as if healing is the purpose of Christian Science. We try to get healed of a physical pain and feel like failures when we don’t, instead of simply working and praying to bring our lives closer to Truth and Love. But healing through spiritual means is important because it’s a sign that we’re genuinely doing that. A pill may alleviate something for awhile, but it’s no way to freedom. Eventually the material approach ends in something that can’t be fixed. We have to ask where we want our lives to go—toward more subjection to matter or more freedom in Spirit?
Death is a belief, not a finality. Again, all the great teachings say this in different ways. We continue to be conscious, and if we want to progress we have to drop material fears and desires. As long as we believe we’re matter and try to keep making the matter work better, we don’t break free.
Gandhi didn’t say draw closer to God, but allow injustice to go on because it isn’t real. In the same way, Mrs. Eddy didn’t say draw closer to God, but don’t care about the physical body because it isn’t real. She said stand up to the oppressive belief that matter controls and prove that spiritual truth is powerful here to end the illusion of suffering. Gandhi didn’t accomplish the end of oppression in his lifetime and neither have we, but it’s so important to begin and stick with the freedom struggle. Not only health, but peace, justice, and the purity of the environment ultimately depend on understanding that Spirit is the reality that unites and sustains us. If matter is what sustains us, we’ll always be fighting over it because there’s never enough.
I pray to want to leave trust in matter for the realization that Spirit is all now and that I can break through to this reality in some degree now. Why go through endless cycles of limitation in the belief that we live in matter when we could awaken to the freedom of eternal spiritual life? If I can make even a tiny bit of progress toward this freedom each day—and help others do the same—I pray to do that.
Finally, how do we “balance” the material and spiritual? I think we’re on the right track if we stay humble and keep desiring to live truthfully. God is Love and isn’t here to condemn us, but to help us. If we have a physical problem, we can keep asking to see more of reality, that is, more of what God is and causes. If people feel their best course for the moment is to fix the body materially and keep striving to get closer to God, they shouldn’t feel bad about that. Truth will continue to lead everyone who’s hungering to know it.
Sorry to go on so long. These aren’t complete answers, but perhaps a start. I hope you’ll feel free to ask again if you find it helpful.
All best, Margaret
Linnea Says:
I like the honesty in this dialog. Thanks for printing it.
Anonymous Says:
It’s funny because the thing I love most about Christian Science is its promise of healing. But I think I do get hung up on it sometimes and that actually prevents the healing from coming as easily. When I’m just focused on listening to God and learning about Her, it comes much easier.
Jim Says:
I’m currently wrestling with some of these issues myself. I’ve been in need of a healing for several months now, but as my prayers have yet to bear visible fruit, I have tumbled into a host of questions similar to those above. It might be helpful to share some of the things I’ve been learning, and maybe pose some of the problems that I’m wrestling with.
At this point I’m convinced that consciousness, and not matter, is the basis of reality. It wasn’t just Christian Science (which I grew up with) but a wide variety of teachings that I have looked at, as well as several personal experiences, which have led me to this conclusion.
One book entitled “The Self Aware Universe” helped strengthen my conviction. The author is a University of Oregon physics professor named Amit Goswami. He argues that all of the paradoxes of quantum physics can be resolved if we only accept consciousness, and not matter, as the basis of reality.
Mr. Goswami tackles three competing views of matter and reality:
1. That matter is the foundation, and that consciousness is a byproduct of material forces. He calls this “Realism.” Like Mary Baker Eddy he notes the problems with unconscious matter creating awareness, and points out the problems of consciousness having the power to manipulate its own creator.
2. That body and mind (or matter and spirit) are two distinct and separate things that interact. Goswami calls this “Dualism.” He points out, however, that for consciousness to manipulate matter there would have to be a process for transferring energy from mind to matter for any physical act we perform. This, he says, would violate the physical principle of conservation of energy, which states that there is a constant amount of matter/energy (which are just different states of the same thing) in the universe.
3. That consciousness is the foundation of reality and that matter is a product of consciousness. Essentially objectified thought. He calls this theory “Idealism.” Though his arguments are complex and hard to follow, he makes a good case for this view, and even describes a process by which one universal consciousness might divide itself into an infinite number of individuals, such as you and me.
Like the person with so many questions about matter, I, too feel matter is “real” in some sense, but I don’t believe it is distinct from consciousness, or has the power to manipulate consciousness. Rather, consciousness defines matter.
Where I get hung up, though, is that I’m not entirely convinced that only “good” consciousness is “real” and that inharmonious thoughts (and their apparent “physical” ills) are “unreal.” From where I sit, thoughts are thoughts. We have good ones and we have bad ones, or at least awareness and lack of awareness, and our experience reflects whichever dominates at the moment. Somehow we all got into this experience of feeling separated from God, therefore one must conclude that it is not only possible but that God must have made such a condition possible, even if only as an illusion. That makes God at least partially responsible for our predicament, but that flies in the face of the statement God is Love. It makes my head spin.
Meanwhile, healing appears elusive right now, and the longer it takes the less I am convinced that Mind is entirely good. I’m open to any thoughts.
Keith Says:
I believe it is the claim of a mind or consciousness besides God that creates the whole scenario of good and bad, heaven and hell, health and illness. If I stick with God’s allness and goodness, I’m finding I experience or am the experience of God’s goodness. If I believe something else, I experience loss of goodness. I’ve had many healings (physical and other types) by humbly yielding to God’s allness. Intellectual over-thinking can be a sign of starting with a mind apart from God.
There’s a story about the Sun shinning one day, I find helpful. The Sun was enjoying the peace and quiet, when all of a sudden there was a commotion on earth. After a few minutes the noise grew louder and the Sun lowered himself. He saw a large number of animals all yelling about how they had found darkness in a cave.
The Sun being curious, asked, “What is darkness?” One of the bears blurted out, “You don’t know what darkness is?” A rabbit spoke up and yelled, “Follow me and I’ll show you.” And the rabbit ran towards the cave. When he reached the cave he dashed in, followed by the other animals, and with the Sun right behind them. When they all were crowded into the cave, do you know what they found? Light! Wherever the Sun looked, he saw light. The brightness of his own being was all that he could see.
Just as with the Sun in this story, everywhere God looks; God sees the brightness of His own being. And if I have humbled myself, I’m finding that my prayer allows me to exchange my limited reference frame of thought, to some degree, for God’s view of His present perfection.
Jim Says:
Ah, but your analogy admits there is a cave, and that the light doesn’t get in there without being taken in there. Yes, as the analogy shows, the light can’t know darkness, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t caves where light doesn’t reach. Its just that the light would never now that, and therfore the light is an unreliable witness.
Keith Says:
Actually, it was just an analogy showing that where God is darkness cannot exist. As I learn more of God’s allness and infinitude, the caves of mental darkness vanish.
Wondering Says:
Keith,
When someone dies, I get mad at God. I know that I shouldn’t but this feeling of pain is somtimes toooooo difficult to bear. Why do people have to die and leave this experience…especially when they seem to be making spiritual progress in their thought? This just doesn’t seem fair. Do you have Any ideas that might help?
Keith Says:
To Wondering,
This may not be the best analogy, but it is what came to mind after reading your questions:
One man at a job gets promoted and we don’t see him anymore. His work took him away to upper management. Another man at work was laid off because his work was not good enough. We liked both and we are angry because we don’t see them anymore.
Jesus, perhaps, we could say, was like the first worker. His putting to use his spiritual understanding enabled him to ascend above our position.
The second man is a friend that has passed away. We believe he/she has been terminated because they have not the sufficient ability to translate.
Sometimes, I believe, those who have spiritualized their thoughts also move to higher attainments as well despite the belief they leave behind a body (our belief of them) for us to contend with. Translation from the mortal sense of things would be very confusing in today’s world. (Missing persons reports/insurance claims/etc.)
However, we never can lose a friend. Both are still living. They always have lived in Mind. It is only our limited sense of life that does not allow us to see them. They have always been the eternal idea of Mind. We view them as mortals; therefore, we don’t see them. The more we see God’s creating to be spiritual, the more we lose the pain and anger associated with mortal thinking. Some day we will see them right where they are in Mind.
Margaret Says:
I really like Keith’s analogy. Another point I think about when injustice feels so real, is that I want to use the energy I’m tempted to put into anger to do something that will really help. We’ll never find logic or justice in a distorted, material view of life. God doesn’t know or allow death. His revelation of Truth, Christ, wakes us up from the dream of death or life in matter. I want to think more consistently in the way Jesus did–where I can see everyone now in spiritual wholeness and happiness–and prove it more by healing here.
Anonymous Says:
Keith and/or Margaret –
I know someone who is dying. He’s given up and said he’s lived a good enough life here and is ready to go on to the next phase. It makes me so sad and frankly it brings up fears of death for myself. What can I do to support life without going against this person’s wishes?
Margaret Says:
This is a challenging situation, but I think the most loving and practical thing we can do is to firmly acknowledge to ourselves that we don’t believe in death. St. Paul said “to be carnally minded is death,” so death is an ignorant mental state of believing life is material. We can be sure that no one can stay in ignorance because Christ is everyone’s real spiritual nature, and is always compelling us out of the illusion of materiality into the awareness of our indestructible spiritual life. I like Mary Baker Eddy’s statement that Christ is “a divine influence ever present in human consciousness….” (in the preface to Science and Health, p. xi). We’re not alone in this journey from illusion to reality. Almighty Love is everyone’s shepherd. To support life is to see it as God–one infinite all-inclusive reality with no opposite. Our clear seeing of this can be a light in the darkness for others.
Cindy Says:
The original wrestler wrote ” But I have reached a bit of a wall with Christian Science mainly over the issue of healing…First of all, I have always felt uneasy when I read or hear others say that there is no material reality.” Then s/he considers that a different understanding of reality might be needed. Margaret’s, Jim’s, and Keith’s explanations are so helpful. And wrestler’s point about the need to understand more clearly the ways in which Christian Science defines reality and matter also help. A basic point in Christian Science is to exchange things for thoughts. Science and Health says, ” Human thoughts have their degrees of comparison. Some thoughts are better than others.” and “God’s thoughts are perfect and eternal, are substance and Life. Material and temporal thoughts are human, involving error, and since God, Spirit, is the only cause, they lack a divine cause. The temporal and material are not then creations of Spirit. They are but counterfeits of the spiritual and eternal.”
When we start with God as being good and all, then we define God’s thoughts as good and all, or perfect and eternal.
Let’s say I exchange the object called a hand for the thoughts it represents. You could say it represents usefulness, dexterity, beauty, holding, giving, strength, flexibility. These are all spiritual ideas, good. But you might also say that the hand could be injured, diseased, painful, weak, cut off. These are also thoughts at this point, but they are material thoughts, not what God creates or sends. Science and Health defines what God creates as reality and anything that is unlike God’s creation as unreality. This is not your standard definition of reality.
The true idea, the spiritual idea, the real idea or the right idea of anything is Christ. And this Christ is our true self–who we already, always are. Thus, we already have the real idea or thought of everything that concerns us. Experiences unfold these real ideas within us to our consciousness when the counterfeit gives place to the true. Thus, a need for healing is the opportunity to discover what the real or right idea is about God, our body, our life, our work or anything else that seems like a mix of good and bad.
In Christian Science, matter is defined as a human concept, a false premise, or even the qualities opposed to Spirit. All these are thoughts, but not God’s thoughts. As we stop thinking these kinds of thoughts and instead think God’s thoughts– goodness, purity, beauty, love– whatever seems material, like a body, becomes more harmonious.
I have found that seeking a healing can sometimes become “a bit of a wall” as wrestler comments. You find the wall looming up and even getting farther and farther and higher and higher as you try to scale it. That is when I find that I was trying to fix something real. If it is real, then God knows it and God made it. If I try to fix it, then I must be saying to myself that I have to be smarter, and more able than God. That is way beyond me. If, instead, I think of it as simply a quality opposed to Spirit and keep my focus on discovering what the right idea is, then the opposing qualities become clearly the counterfeit and no longer scary or powerful or worth my attention.
It is in seeking to understand reality, the true idea, or God, that healing results as a side effect, so to speak. But it is also the proof that these ideas are Truth or reality. Knowing that God is supreme even in the world that we might call material, always loving us, no matter what we think is real, always available and always pouring out the true idea to us is a big comfort to me.