IN THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE BIBLE LESSON March 30, 2009 Issue

A LESSON IN DIVINE LOGIC

BRIAN HALL

To read this column online, go to the spirituality.com homepage.

NO ONE'S LIFE is free of challenges, whether they come as illness, financial trouble, relationship snarls, or other difficulties. But this week's Christian Science Bible Lesson on "Unreality" discusses how to meet life's challenges head-on, and heal them by gaining a better understanding of God and our relationship with Him.

One way in which this spiritual understanding develops is through what Science and Health terms "right reasoning": "For right reasoning there should be but one fact before the thought, namely, spiritual existence" (p. 492, cit. 13). Bible citation 11 offers an example. Jesus is presented with what looks to be a very challenging situation: a man who appears to be demon-possessed, as well as blind and dumb. Despite this evidence of suffering, the man is completely healed through Jesus' spiritual understanding, "insomuch that the blind and dumb both spake and saw" (Matt. 12:22).