Radical changes are taking place in society's thinking about how best to alleviate suffering and restore the sick and dying to health and usefulness. At issue is whether humanity will continue to approach healing and medicine from the premise that disease and health are essentially physiological phenomena, or whether serious attention will be given to the growing recognition among some physicians and lay people that disease and cure are far more mental and spiritual than previously thought.

Scientific materialism would reduce all life and mind to chemistry. Even thought is viewed by many as a physical process. This view is represented in books like Molecules of the Mind: The Brave New Science of Molecular Psychology, where Jon Franklin writes, "... every human thought, hope, fear, passion, yearning, and insight results from chemical interactions between transmitters and receptors." He goes on to assert, "The chief difference between us and an Apple computer is complexity."

Although there are scientists in the field of brain/mind research who challenge this totally materialistic view, none of them deny the underlying material basis of consciousness. The materialistic, or mechanistic, view of man has fundamentally shaped today's medicine and care of people.

From scholarly literature to popular newspaper columns, many writers lament the impersonalization of medicine: the rapid evolution toward highly skilled and specialized technicians and the transformation of medicine into an industry, run—in the United States and some other countries—at unmanageable costs by corporations and the state. Even many healthcare workers are concerned that technology views patients essentially as material machines with exchangeable parts.

Christ Jesus set the precedent.

Concurrent with this material concept of medicine, a fresh new wind is blowing—a wider recognition that thought influences bodily functions far more directly than has been generally acknowledged. This recognition has fathered the broad range of approaches known as "holistic medicine," which stems from the conviction that effective treatment must take into account the "whole person"—his personal problems, fears, attitudes, diet, exercise, and so forth—not just the particular diseased organ.

The New York Times (May 24, 1983) quotes the father of modern medicine, Sir William Osler, as having noted dryly nearly a century ago: "The case of tuberculosis depends more on what the patient has in his head than what he has in his chest." This article went on to observe that "every ill that can befall the body—from the common cold to cancer and heart disease—can be influenced, positively or negatively, by a person's mental state ...."

To a mental state that sees the body as essentially material and self-acting, it would seem that healing could be taken no further than limited material possibilities, that regardless of how well the body is maintained, oiled, fueled, exercised, and even replaced with spare parts, it is still doomed to eventual deterioration and decay by the very nature of matter. Actually, such a state of material hopelessness is often an open door for the Bible's message of the perfection and completeness of God and man to be seen in a new and practical light. Christ Jesus set the precedent and left his followers of all time with the responsibility to go and do likewise—to show forth in their own lives the healing omnipotence of God, Spirit.

In Christ Jesus' command "Repent: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand" the Greek word for repent can be traced back to the denotative meaning "to change one's perspective." Clearly, Jesus' teaching demanded—and continues to demand—a recognition of the spiritual nature of reality. What is required to see and experience this reality is a willingness to change our perspective from believing we live in matter to understanding our true spiritual being. Jesus said: "Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. ... That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit." It was the Master's divine mission to open blinded eyes to the true spiritual nature of reality, already present, and to demonstrate the inevitable healing effect that naturally follows such Christly realization.

Mary Baker Eddy, after many years of searching for health through material methods of all sorts, finally found her complete answer and healing not in material remedy but in the gospel accounts of Jesus' own healing work. She discovered that his healing work was based on divine Principle and spiritual law. She explains in her book Retrospection and Introspection, "With our Master, life was not merely a sense of existence, but an accompanying sense of power that subdued matter and brought to light immortality, insomuch that the people 'were astonished at his doctrine: for he taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes.' Life, as defined by Jesus, had no beginning; it was not the result of organization, or infused into matter; it was Spirit."

Christian Science seeks to put healing on the wholly spiritual foundation that Christ Jesus taught. Just think what realizing the allness of Spirit can mean to anyone feeling backed to the wall by an illness or pain! Instead of having a body malfunctioning outside of his control, he sees that what he thinks of as his body is literally and fundamentally "thought" manifested outwardly. And because the so-called human body is mental in nature it needn't be held in bondage to material laws or conditions. Despite all the traditional theories to the contrary, what is actually needed is the correction (or spiritualization) of thought—and no one has incurable thinking!

The Christly method of healing is not blind faith.

A very clear-cut example I experienced of the healing effect derived from the spiritualization of thought took place a couple of years ago when I began having symptoms of heart trouble. Turning to Christ for a clearer, more spiritual sense of things, I began to ponder two statements from Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mrs. Eddy. I read: "Jesus beheld in Science the perfect man, who appeared to him where sinning mortal man appears to mortals. In this perfect man the Saviour saw God's own likeness, and this correct view of man healed the sick." Then I read, "Your decisions will master you, whichever direction they take."

A little later in the day, while sitting in my car in a public parking lot, I suddenly began experiencing severe chest pains and was losing consciousness. But then I thought again of the line "Your decisions will master you, whichever direction they take." I saw that I had a choice to make: I could either give in to the hypnotic, mortal sense of the situation and all it would include or I could choose the spiritual reality of my being as God's individual expression and refuse to participate in mortal mind's drama. As I continued to affirm my perfection as God's child, the symptoms ceased, including those that had appeared chronic. I was not acting on human will, deciding what human course I would take; but instead I was acting out of obedience to Christ to choose spiritual reality rather than material unreality. I drove home completely well.

To glimpse the erroneous nature of belief in a material body is certainly not to ignore its fearful claims but, instead, to begin to see the sovereignty of divine Mind and the fact that this Mind and its wholly good, wholly spiritual idea, man, are actually the only true substance.

Each time one experiences healing through spiritual means, he or she is not only cured physically but has taken a significant step toward the realization that man is God's spiritual manifestation here and now in spite of the seeming evidence to the contrary. The individual is not only physically freed; he has made significant progress in working out his salvation at the same time!

Those who are consistently striving to practice Christian healing are taking a modest, yet significant, step beyond material methods of cure—helping to open the way for mankind to follow the commands and example of Christ Jesus. Their healing record proves the applicability of Christ Jesus' teachings to the ills of today. In many families several generations of Christian Scientists have successfully relied on Christ, Truth, for the meeting of their needs, including those involving health problems of all types, stages, and degrees.

Thousands upon thousands of people have been healed by this Christly method of prayer, even of diseases and injuries pronounced hopeless by current medical reckoning. Such healing is not accomplished by mental manipulation or by a hit-or-miss, blind faith but by prayerfully and systematically replacing the deceptive claims of material sense with specific spiritual truths. This prayer to see more of what God is doing eliminates the ignorance and fear that paint the false picture of sin and disease, and brings healing.

Surely, neither the unselfish physician nor the Christian Science healer is fully satisfied with the healing results of his or her practice. What doctor who loves enough to be in the medical profession doesn't mourn over cases for which medicine can simply offer no hope?

And who in the practice of Christian Science doesn't know the daily demand for deeper spirituality and purity, increased spiritual understanding, and an ever closer approximation of the Christian life and healing work of the supreme example, Christ Jesus? Yet steady progress in the application of purely spiritual healing without material concession can and does offer humanity a safe and divinely directed way out of sin and disease.

Christian Scientists are not eschewing practical help for the sake of a nebulous hope in divine intervention. Neither are Christian Scientists or their children going without a practical, long-tested healing method. They responsibly turn to the medicine of divine Mind—the reorienting, restorative power of God—which they know through experience is most reliable in healing. The spiritual concept of medicine regards the divine dimension of healing not as a comforting adjunct to material methods but as utterly practical and sufficient in healing the body as well as moral and social ills.

Through their lives, their more consistent healing work, and their prayers for the world, those effectively engaged in Christian healing will dissolve with Christly love the battle lines mortal mind has tried to draw among those in the practice of healing. Eventually the concept of what really heals will be lifted higher into the realm of divine Love.