Article March 24, 2014 Issue

Dissolving ‘unnatural reluctance’

Charles Cohn

I’ve often thought about Mary Baker Eddy’s admonition to Christian Scientists: “If students do not readily heal themselves, they should early call an experienced Christian Scientist to aid them. If they are unwilling to do this for themselves, they need only to know that error cannot produce this unnatural reluctance” (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 420).

“Unnatural reluctance” sometimes takes different identities besides the reluctance to call for help. It can be reluctance to pray daily for ourselves, reluctance to give thorough Christian Science treatment to situations or conditions, reluctance to study deeply, or reluctance to stop and think quietly and clearly. And isn’t it interesting that Mrs. Eddy paired the word reluctance with the word unnatural? Reluctance is not a looming impediment to our spiritual growth—it is unnatural.

Several years ago, I read a clinical definition of old age that included words to this effect: The cumulative effects on the mind and body of untreated maladies. Although I’d begun to be aware over the years that a number of conditions had attached themselves to me, including a growth on the side of my body, I’d been putting off expecting to be healed of them. Now, I realized, God was telling me to be more earnest in praying for myself and to call a Christian Science practitioner.