The promise of immortality here and now

A while back, I was up all night quite ill. As morning broke, I asked my wife to read to me that week’s Bible Lesson from the “Christian Science Quarterly.” One passage from “Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures” by Mary Baker Eddy really spoke to me. Echoing passages from Paul’s letters to the early Christians (see I Corinthians 15:54 and II Corinthians 5:4), it states, “Every quality and condition of mortality is lost, swallowed up in immortality” (p. 215).

It had felt as if I were being swallowed up by this illness, but this passage made me realize that I had it backward. Evil can’t swallow good. Good swallows up evil. The immortality of God, divine Life, was present, and I could trust the healing power of God. I began to feel the comforting, gentle power of divine omnipotence envelop me, and in a short while I was well.

As usually happens in a healing brought about through Christian Science, what took place was more than a physical cure. Specific spiritual facts had come to thought, revealing more about God and about man’s present immortality as God’s child. Each day we have the opportunity to realize that God is divine, unending Life. This Life gives us the ability to overcome sin, disease, and limitations of all kinds by realizing that our true life is not biological or psychological but divine Life’s immortal expression.

This promise is not about an event at the end of life but about what happens throughout life here and now. It’s about swallowing up the fear of disease with trust in God, silencing the cacophony of physicality and sin with peace and purity, and revealing our true selfhood as spiritual, not material. This brings healing.

Step by step we can realize and prove that no condition is ever beyond the healing power of divine Life and that we are never in a situation where God’s guidance cannot direct and save us. Divine Life is always our life. Yielding to this truth and God’s governance leads us out of the most dire circumstances, as shown in the biblical account of Jonah.

Jonah was in trouble. He had disobeyed God’s direction to go to the great city of Nineveh and expose the evil there and had instead taken a ship in the opposite direction (see Jonah 1-3). When a storm threatened the lives of everyone on the ship, Jonah told the mariners to throw him overboard. He then found himself drowning in not just water but a sea of remorse.

But that wasn’t the end of his story. The Bible says, “Now the Lord had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah.” The spiritual sense of this story reveals that God was present, protecting Jonah and giving him the love and direction he needed to conquer the mortality of willfulness, regret, and failure, and even the mortal threat of the waves.

As a result, he became inspired and confident in his trust in God and willing to be obedient to God’s will – which sometimes feels hard but is always good. The fish deposited him onto dry land, and he was able to go forward, following God’s guidance and bringing repentance, reformation, and healing to the people of Nineveh.

This is what is so profoundly wonderful about understanding immortality. We realize that our life is not at the mercy of fear, pride, or doubt; nor is it in the grip of disease and death. Our life is the expression of divine Life, now and always.

Like Jonah, we may need to reexamine our motives or even turn our life in a different direction. But we can allow God, divine Love, to help us forgive not only others but ourselves. We can let divine Mind, also a synonym for God, help us see everyone’s (including our own) innate perfection as God’s child. And we can permit infinite Truth to take away the hurts of the past and reveal the permanent love and joy God has for us now. In other words, we can allow the immortal reality of divine Life, Truth, and Love to swallow up our worry and anger with peace, hope, goodness, and security.

This is immortal Life’s divine activity in individual lives – the truth that Christ Jesus lived so fully – and it heals mentally and physically. This is the only true activity going on – divine healing producing health, harmony, and peace, because in God’s allness, every condition, trait, or fear of mortality is being swallowed up in immortality.

Adapted from an editorial published in the Aug. 7, 2023, issue of the Christian Science Sentinel.