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God, divine Being, must be all-harmonious in order to have existence and to be eternal. To be harmonious and eternal, God must be composed exclusively of good qualities, such as joy, freedom, intelligence, and wisdom. If Being were made up of both good and evil, harmony and discord, or light and darkness, it would be a kingdom divided against itself that couldn’t stand (see Mark 3:24). Thus, only good qualities comprise Being—and Being expresses its infinite range of good qualities in its creation. Each individual is a unique expression of that infinite gamut of good qualities.

You might think of all-harmonious Being as a wall that goes on forever, stretching up infinitely high and as far in either direction as you can see. The notion of something opposing God supposes that on that infinite wall of good there exists a little pencil dot of something ungodlike. But, of course, that pencil dot isn’t there. If good and evil were both real and at war, the universe would have no moral principle sustaining it. So Being can’t be divided against itself, and nothing can oppose it. The Bible emphasizes that God is infinite, and we prove that infinity by obeying the First Commandment (see Exodus 20:3).

Mary Baker Eddy, the discoverer of Christian Science, coined the term mortal mind to describe that suppositional pencil dot of something apart from God. She saw that the belief in something apart from God claims to be able to blow itself up into a material universe, where there would be eons of stellar and planetary evolution, an earth and people on it, and histories of nations and peoples who are born, live, and die. In that false dream, people would have minds, ways of thinking, cultures, and belief systems apart from God. But limited human thoughts, perceptions, and experiences are not real, in the sense that they are known only by a wrong sense of mind and never known by the Mind that is God.

Parenthetically, because Christian Science is the Comforter that Jesus promised in John 14:16, it teaches that although human life is not “real” in an absolute sense, it’s not to be abandoned. Rather, we should appreciate the good in it. This limited sense of life is to be redeemed, purified, and uplifted until people see that only divine Life, God, reigns supreme.

In a sense, the perception that there is life in matter apart from God, would itself constitute a superstition—a belief held by the human mind, not the reality known by divine Mind. But within the general belief and superstition of life in matter can be found specific superstitious thought systems, whether astrology, witchcraft, or candomblé. But these are only beliefs, clusters of thoughts that seem to have evolved and existed over time. 

These false perspectives are worldviews to be put aside for what is actual. We defend ourselves against superstition by recognizing the nothingness of any mind apart from God that could believe in, be affected by, or fear those thought clusters or those who think and act on the basis of those systems. 

Right where there might seem to be faith in feng shui—the Chinese belief that the relative position of objects in homes or other buildings affects the energy and health of those who interact with those buildings—there is really one Mind that provides everyone with health and “the divine energy of Spirit” (see Mary Baker Eddy, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 249).

Sometimes the human mind holds superstitions that aren’t directed against an individual. So some actions or even words are seen as bringing good or bad luck. For example, many people in China think that because in Cantonese the number four sounds like the word death, it’s an unlucky number, while 28 is lucky since it sounds like “easy wealth.” But other times there are violent practices based on superstition—for example, the use of the body parts of albinos to bring good luck in parts of Africa (for some practical steps that are being taken to prevent this practice, see http://tinyurl.com/6wtckh6).

But the practice of personal will is destroyed by understanding that in truth there is no pencil dot on that wall. In truth nothing exists apart from all-harmonious God. The mental danger would lie in allowing oneself to be tricked into accepting as real the world view of some belief system.

It’s important to note here that the understanding of God as infinite good is not a belief system—it’s reality itself. When we cling to this reality, we destroy and are unaffected by any particular set of beliefs, even if there is someone wishing ill upon us from the basis of those beliefs. Evil beliefs are annihilated through loving God and loving His image and likeness—each and every individual in his or her one and only true being. And although it’s wise to be alert to the thoughts around us, we protect ourselves by being familiar with and loving good.

Here’s an example: A friend of mine recently accepted a prominent post in an African country. Many warned him that he might be the target of attacks through witchcraft initiated by those jealous of him. Though he was aware of that, he went forward feeling protected. 

However, one day at work, for no apparent reason, he felt an electrical current run through him that made the left side of his body tremble and made him feel as if he were being paralyzed. Initially he panicked, but then he pulled himself together to pray. He thought about passages from the Bible describing God’s perfection, and he recognized that God is the only Mind and that He is good alone and communicates only good. 

My friend reasoned that, therefore, he and the organizational initiatives he had undertaken were safe. He recognized that this type of experience would come from the general beliefs of witchcraft held in the society in which he was living. He gained a great sense of peace by knowing that there was in truth no evil mind that could affect him—and the bodily abnormalities stopped and never returned (see the French edition of The Herald of Christian Science, Le Héraut de la Science Chrétienne, November 2011, p. 6).

Speaking of the culture and society in which many live, could Western medicine be considered a cultural practice, an entire discipline based on human belief? More patients, and even more doctors, are questioning the scientific objectivity of conventional medicine. In Healing Logics: Culture and Medicine in Modern Health Belief Systems, an anthology that includes writings of leading medical anthropologists, the editor, Erika Brady, characterizes contemporary biomedicine as a highly evolved form of folk medicine, a social construct that has become the standard of the West (see p. 6).

While Science and Health teaches that we should love and appreciate the motives of those practicing conventional medicine, the book also shows that diagnoses, prognoses, and the cure of disease through surgery, diet, or drugs are all the merchandise of human belief. But beyond all cultural beliefs, the understanding of God’s infinitude and of the perfection of His image and likeness—an understanding open to all—heals in a true sense.

The perception that there is life in matter apart from God, is itself a superstition–a belief held by the human mind, not the reality known by divine Mind.

Jesus healed and overcame superstition and superstitious practices more effectively than anyone. At the pool of Bethesda lay a man who had been sick for 38 years. The Gospel account says that when Jesus asked him if he wanted to be well, the man said that when the water of the pool was troubled, there was no one to put him into it before the others. In other words, this man put faith in the superstition that entering the troubled water before others would heal him. But through his Christly love Jesus healed the man immediately. Later, Jesus saw him in the temple and told him not to sin, lest a worse thing should befall him (see John 5:1–14).

Of course, this doesn’t mean that we should see a sick person as a sinner. Quite the contrary! Every individual reflects God’s infinite goodness, while both sickness and sin have as their basis mortal mind. We’d be mistaken to assume that we can be made whole simply through saying a few words of hocus-pocus or through some other mortal-based, superstitious technique. We find health through realizing our oneness with God’s infinite moral perfection, and by living consistently with that perfection.

The infinity of God and His goodness gives an unshakable confidence that superstition and witchcraft are nonentities, totally unable to affect us or anyone. Truly that’s worth not just believing, but understanding!