Articles

Not Time, But Spiritual Unfoldment                                                                       Roger H. Williams

Healing in Christian Science is not dependent on the passage of time, or material conditions. Healing is the direct result of the clear realization of God’s allness, and of man as the image and likeness of God, without a single vestige of error. The deciding factor is not time, but one’s receptivity to the fact that man is not a mortal having a bad time, but the immortal idea of God, having all that God gives — good.
     Healing comes through the realization of God’s creation as He has created it — complete, harmonious, pure, free, intact — in other words, perfect now. Healing is permanent when we understand and accept the perfection and unchangeableness of our selfhood as the son of God, never in need of healing.
     The first chapter of Genesis states that God “saw every thing that He had made, and, behold it was very good.” God never sees His creation as less than good, because He created nothing else; so nothing but good really exists. This fact remains as true today as “when the morning stars sang together.” We need only to align our thought with the facts of being, and refuse to accept the fable that man is a mortal, in order to be completely free from any discord. No passage of time is required to establish the truth in one’s thinking.
     Christ Jesus healed instantly. His thought was constantly in the realm of Spirit. Even though the physical senses presented an ailing or decrepit person, he saw only the perfect man of God’s creating, untouched by matter. Consider his healing of the impotent man at the pool of Bethesda.
     For thirty-eight years he had been in that condition. When Jesus saw him, he did not take his pulse and temperature; nor did he give him a physical examination. He asked simply and directly, “Wilt thou be made whole?” Jesus must have perceived that the man was receptive to truth, for he commanded, “Rise, take up thy bed, and walk.” And we read, “Immediately the man was made whole, and took up his bed, and walked.” No prolonged convalescence, no struggling, no delay — immediately he was restored to normal activity!
     Mrs. Eddy writes, “The physical healing of Christian Science results now, as in Jesus’ time, from the operation of divine Principle, before which sin and disease lose their reality in human consciousness and disappear as naturally and as necessarily as darkness gives place to light and sin to reformation. Now, as then, these mighty works are not supernatural, but supremely natural.” (S&H) Sin and disease disappear before the life-giving light and power of Christian Science. Inharmony and perfection cannot be present in our thinking at the same time. Which shall it be?

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