Article October 12, 1992 Issue

Right conclusions—discovering the truth of God and His creation

When we start from the right premise, wonderful possibilities for healing come into view.

Elise M. Lunas

When people see bad things happening around them—family conflicts, accidents, natural disasters, illness—they often draw certain conclusions about the significance of these events. Some intuitively feel there is a God, but decide that all these evils must somehow have a higher purpose which only God in His wisdom can know and understand. Others reason that if God truly were wise and all-powerful, He wouldn't allow these tragedies to happen. Therefore they conclude that God either does not exist or is simply unable to do much about suffering and evil. These conclusions have something in common: they begin with the premise that what the physical senses report is true and reliable.

Most of us, by the time we are in grade school, have already had some indication of the unreliability of these senses. We learn, for example, that the stars in the nighttime sky are not tiny lights but suns, planets, and whole galaxies. Or that a bright full moon actually gives off no light of its own but reflects light from the sun. Such deceptions of the senses are easily explained by natural science. But they do help us discover in small ways what Christianity makes clear at a profound level—the material sense of things is unreliable. In fact, Christian Science gives practical and reliable evidence that even such things as sickness, accidents, and sin are basically illusory in nature, even though they appear very real.

The Bible includes many examples of Christ Jesus' refusal to accept the outward appearance of things as "fact," even though most people around him unquestioningly did. In the case of Lazarus, for instance, it was quite evident that Lazarus had died. The family had even buried the body. John's Gospel tells us that Jesus, on the other hand, had a very different view. In referring to Lazarus's death, he said, "Our friend Lazarus sleepeth; but I go, that I may awake him out of sleep." When Jesus arrived, he did indeed raise Lazarus from the grave.

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