One of the great injustices in history is one that most people have experienced. It is this: suffering for doing something right. The event may have been pretty simple. For example, a friend told me of a neighbor who had acted harshly toward her because he misunderstood a comment she intended to be helpful. For her, his attitude was quite unjust. It had caused her much distress. And there are the larger injustices, like a man imprisoned for years for a crime he didn’t commit. He was doing something right, but because an eyewitness made a mistake in an attempt to identify the actual criminal, this man had been unjustly convicted. Eventually he was proved innocent and was released, but an injustice had been done.

Illustrations of injustice, minor and major, are so prevalent that Mary Baker Eddy deals with this issue in her book Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures. In fact, at one point, she devotes some 12 pages to exploring the problem of suffering for doing something intended to be helpful and good  (pp. 430–442). She uses an example that stands as a symbol identifying a wide array of unjust experiences. She describes a fictional character who overextends himself while trying to help a friend. As the result of this noble effort, he becomes ill. He is put on “trial” for having acted in a way that violated certain “health laws.” In effect, he is being tried for his “crime” of helping someone in need.

Mrs. Eddy calls this allegory a “mental case.” Identifying the situation as mental has helped me see how it could apply to a range of injustices. She shows how, at least as I read the case, “Judge Medicine” could symbolize a kind of judgment way beyond medical issues. For me, Judge Medicine serves as a symbol for a worldly or matter-based way of judging many things in life. You might say this kind of judgment is the too-often insistence that the only legitimate way to appraise a situation is from the standpoint that matter has final authority in how, or even if, you live. In a way, Judge Medicine is saying that if you don’t accept matter as the basic substance of your reality, you will pay a price. If you don’t bow down to matter as authentic power, the Judge will impose a penalty on you.

A little explanation here about matter. I don’t believe using that word is an ideal way to identify the things around us—to describe the substance we’re accustomed to seeing and touching. I’ve found it helpful to think of substance as a type of energy. Christian Science uses terms like “the energy of Spirit” or “divine energy.” Matter might be described not as substance itself but as the belief that substance or divine energy can be vulnerable. This is the assumption that substance or the harmony of Spirit can be distorted into inharmony or discord, disease or limitation. 

Real substance is the divine energy of Spirit, pure and perfect. Matter is the illusion that this energy is not divine—that it can become ungodlike, imperfect, mortal instead of immortal. Mortal mind is a supposed mind apart from God. And matter is mortal mind’s assumption about substance. Matter is an erring concept that isn’t substance at all. In fact, it is dead wrong about the nature of substance. But mortal mind tries to tell us that matter is substance. And that this substance is vulnerable. We’ve got to decide whether to believe or disbelieve matter and its erring source, a fallacious mortal mind.

All this certainly does broaden the base of how to think about Judge Medicine. Sometimes I think he could easily be called “Judge Matter.” This extended description has enabled me to recognize how a material way of judging events opens the door to a lot of injustice. As Science and Health continues the account, this fellow helps his neighbor. His aid results in overworking himself and he becomes sick. In the words of the story, he “is charged with having committed liver-complaint” (p. 430). And so the plot is about how this poor individual is put on trial with Judge Medicine overseeing what might be described as the jury of material sense. 

Finally the helpless defendant is pronounced guilty, and the Judge insists that he must pay a penalty for having done good. All too often I see you and me ending up as the guilty guy. Sometimes we do things that aren’t bad at all, and yet bad things happen to us. And one of the problems is that Judge Medicine appears to have ultimate control over the lives of everyone. Again the “Judge” is essentially a symbol of the world’s insistence that everything must be assessed from a matter-based perspective. And matter-based means a standpoint of vulnerability instead of the foundation of Spirit’s allness and perfection. 

The Judge is terribly harsh! “Judge Medicine then proceeds to pronounce the solemn sentence of death upon the prisoner. . . . For this crime Mortal Man is sentenced to be tortured until he is dead” (p. 433). Here, for the crime of doing good, the victim is sentenced to a fatal illness. But he could just as well have been sentenced to an accident, or old age, or the adverse effect of hatred that might be called mental assassination, or whatever other kind of injustice is dreamed up within a mortal sense of existence. And it would claim to torture us until our joy or health, gratitude or inspiration, dies out.

You’ve always been innocent in God’s eyes. The Christ is here to advocate your freedom.

There’s just no assurance of justice the way this material view of reality is set up. In a way, the so-called laws of matter have pretty well tied the hands of Judge Medicine. He doesn’t have much choice. There’s really only one way to get justice. We won’t get it in Judge Medicine’s courtroom. We’ve got to move to a higher court. In this story the case is appealed to the Supreme Court of Spirit, where Christian Science becomes Counsel for the man unjustly convicted. 

If you haven’t read the account, it’s quite an inspiring story—especially as the scene shifts from the Court of Error to the Court of Spirit. “Christian Science turned from the abashed witnesses, his words flashing as lightning . . . ” (p. 439), as he challenges Judge Medicine, and says, “Now what greater justification can any deed have, than that it is for the good of one’s neighbor? Wherefore, then, in the name of outraged justice, do you sentence Mortal Man for ministering to the wants of his fellow-man in obedience to divine law? You cannot trample upon the decree of the Supreme Bench” (p. 440).

Read this allegory from the standpoint of any injustice that has been done to you, whether days ago or decades ago. Let it show you the vital need to get out of the Court of Error (don’t keep living the sentence that Judge Matter has placed on you), and get into the Court of Spirit. Then let this case illustrate what a powerful advocate Christian Science is in bringing justice into your life. I love to think of how our true nature is described as the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Spirit overturns the lower court. “[Your] form [is] erect and commanding, [your] countenance beaming with health and happiness” (p. 442).

Whatever and whenever the injustice, you are innocent. It’s time to have Judge Matter’s sentence lifted off your life. You are not vulnerable. It’s time for that mistake to be reversed. You’ve always been innocent in God’s eyes. The Christ is here to advocate your freedom. And you’re standing before the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Spirit, ready to be released. It’s time for you to be getting justice!