Editorial November 8, 1993 Issue

There is no disease in the kingdom of God

Richard C. Bergenheim

If one is unaware of the healing and saving gospel of Christ, disease can be a dreadful thing. But if one has begun to understand the significance of Jesus' life, he or she will have started to see that disease has no dominion over man. When Jesus preached the gospel of the kingdom of God, he healed sickness and disease, proving his message that man is not sinful and fallen, deserving suffering or unable to ward it off, but is actually the blessed child of God. Man has not stopped being God's offspring, nor has Jesus' message to mankind lost one bit of its significance. Neither has the healing effect of his teaching disappeared.

We live in an age that is convinced that disease is a physical condition and that relief can come only from physical remedies—though more physicians are beginning to consider the mental state of patients. Divine Science, or Christian Science, reveals that disease is not actually physical but mental. Disease is an element of the Adam-dream, the deep sleep that the book of Genesis describes. Christian healing is proof that disease is never more than a misconception, a mistaken view of our nature and condition (although it surely seems real to the sufferer until the healing light of Christ destroys the misconception). The activity of Christ, Truth, in human consciousness awakens people from the mortal dream, which includes suffering and disease, and shows man to be the actual reflection, or idea, of God. Christ brings to consciousness both the idea and the experience of God's unlimited love for us.

Jesus saw the dominion of God where others saw the dominion of disease. Christ Jesus' spiritual, God-centered approach to life brought healing to countless sufferers. If he had ever believed disease was real, ordained of God, he could not have healed others, for he would have had the same beliefs about health as the rest of mankind. Then as now, mankind was in grave need of a different view of life, and the greatness of Jesus' life was that it included the revelation of God as our Father, the divine originating Principle of being. Christ Jesus proved God to be God: omnipotent, ever-present good; and he proved that man is subject to God and to God alone. To Jesus, disease had no place, no jurisdiction, no power, no form, no reality. It did not express divinity. Jesus knew that all life, all being, is of God, and therefore all life necessarily manifests the Divine, reflects it, expresses it.

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