Article January 22, 1996 Issue

A QUESTIONS & ANSWERS EXCHANGE

Are there questions you'd like to explore with other readers and with the editorial staff of the Christian Science Sentinel? This column offers a place for that exchange to happen. What's here isn't intended to give a definitive answer. The queries and the ideas spring from the heart, as we are walking side by side.

Q. Can prayer heal mental illness, especially something as serious and long-standing as schizophrenia?—from a minister in Massachusetts

A. Yes. For example, in the November 16, 1987, Sentinel there is a testimony recounting the healing through Christian Science treatment of schizophrenia. There are no limits to what prayer can accomplish when it flows from an understanding of God's laws. In a Christian Science lecture broadcast on radio, "Parents, children, and Christianity," lecturer Lois Carlson tells of a woman who was healed of advanced senility through prayer. It was like a terrible sentence that she and her family had lived under for years. A diagnosis is like that. It's like a court's conviction of an innocent person for a crime he never committed. We can begin to see our own spiritual innocence as God's pure creation and grasp that it's truly God who is the Parent of every child, including ourselves. Then we have a basis for reversing a mistaken conviction. In Christ Jesus' time, mental and physical illnesses were often thought to be signs of uncleanness or sin. Today illnesses may be attributed to physical chemistry or genetic defects. So I ask myself, Where do we look for ultimate truth? To the constantly shifting convictions of human intellect or to Christ, to that which Isaiah (9:6) calls "Wonderful, Counsellor"?—from a reader in Massachusetts