Article January 26, 1998 Issue

Why settle for feeling just a little better?

With God's help, complete healing is possible

By Tony Lobl

The word healing, used extensively nowadays, can still mean what it meant in Biblical times. The prophets and particularly Christ Jesus—using no material aid of any sort—literally restored health and life to those sick or dying, and even to those who had recently died. Applied to those incidents, healing described the ability of God, Spirit, absolutely to overrule the ills of humanity and to restore to individuals their wholeness—mentally and physically. This is the way in which the word healing is still used today in the practice of Christian Science.

More recently the word healing has commonly been used to imply the act of restoring some sense of peace to an individual who nevertheless continues to be physically ill or dying. The word may be used to connote the nurturing of the ability to live with pain rather than to gain freedom from it. Healing of abuse is frequently seen as coming to terms with a bad past despite its awfulness rather than the more spiritual stand of rising beyond any sense that one has ever truly been associated with or marked by past events.

A step more spiritual in facing suffering, a willingness to carry on despite a problem, a determination to refuse entry to a haunting memory that keeps knocking at the door of thought—each can be a positive step of progress beyond capitulation to despair. They may even initiate an openness to a profounder spiritual healing. But in and of themselves, they do not constitute a Christlike understanding of God and man, which truly and completely heals. It is this understanding that God provides as His healing agent.

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