Freed from symptoms of disease

Have you ever considered the idea that there’s a mental aspect to healing? Christian Science brings out the Bible-based idea that God is the divine Mind, and that this realization empowers us to maintain better health and find healing. And this isn’t limited to mental health alone, but also extends to physical well-being.

Years ago, a couple of months after running my first marathon I exhibited symptoms of a disease that had been diagnosed in other members of my family. As I passed from one familiar stage to another, I decided to turn to God for help.

Christian Science explains that the culprit behind discordant conditions is some mistaken belief held in the human mind about the nature of existence, and the cure comes from yielding to God, the immortal divine Mind, who is also infinite Truth. This kind of prayer brings out the spiritual facts that lift one out of limitations and fears and heal disease. Mary Baker Eddy, the discoverer of Christian Science, wrote, “Christian Science is the law of Truth, which heals the sick on the basis of the one Mind or God” (“Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures,” p. 482).

The first chapter of Genesis in the Bible portrays God as the sole intelligence of the universe. This divine Mind is the universal Spirit, wholly good, causing and maintaining its creation of infallible goodness. Consequently, health is a permanent spiritual attribute that can never actually be lost. As we glimpse more of this spiritual reality, this brings out better health in our lives.

I understood that while the condition certainly felt very physical, at its root I was actually dealing with mortal thoughts and fears in three forms: the concept that disease is normal and can dictate its own terms, the fear that I was susceptible to disease, and the notion that there were unavoidable reasons the condition had emerged in me.

My prayers reasoned that disease isn’t good, so it doesn’t come from God, the divine intelligence. God’s children, the spiritual offspring of the divine nature, can only experience what Mind gives them – purity and wholeness. This spiritual reality was a springboard for the prayer that routed out my general fear of the disease.

I thought of a Bible story where Christ Jesus’ disciples were trying to figure out the cause or faults behind a certain man’s blindness (see John 9:1-7). Jesus explained that their approach was off. In their search for the flaws in the minds of the man or his parents, the disciples accepted blindness as an inevitable condition of some legitimate cause. But God is the only legitimate cause, as Jesus proved when he healed the man.

I also gave some thought to this statement in Science and Health: “It is latent belief in disease, as well as the fear of disease, which associates sickness with certain circumstances and causes the two to appear conjoined, even as poetry and music are reproduced in union by human memory” (pp. 377-378). I realized I was making the same mistake the disciples had. How often had I linked this disease with my family! I had been, in effect, unwittingly arguing that I was predisposed to get it too.

But what divine Mind, or God, knows of us is the only truth, the only legitimate power to control us. And God knows us as spiritual and whole, not vulnerable. Gaining a better sense of everyone’s inherent health and goodness, I no longer felt that disease had been waiting to get an inevitable hold of me.

Lastly, I realized that I had accepted that running the marathon had irreparably sapped my strength, leaving me vulnerable. Through prayer I came to realize that nothing could have been more wrong. My training for and running of the race had been motivated by a desire to express my true nature as God’s child – reflecting God’s strength and overcoming injury, limitations, and doubt. This had strengthened my awareness of real health as an attribute of God. There was no way this could deplete me.

After about a week of prayer along these lines, the symptoms of the disease stopped, never to be seen again.

Turning to God in the inspired light of prayer accomplishes what the human mind can’t: It reveals the divine Mind’s vast goodness and care for us all, casting out the darkness and bringing healing.