Article November 6, 2017 Issue

Lazarus and the biosphere

Eric Thacher

We read and hear much about “sustainability” in reference to earth’s ecosystems, both human and natural. These ecosystems are regarded to be in conflict and disordered. We hear reports about the oceans warming, glaciers retreating, and sea levels rising. Some climatological literature examines the concept of a point of no return.

Can our prayers heal such disorders? In Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, Mary Baker Eddy wrote, “Whatever the belief is, if arguments are used to destroy it, the belief must be repudiated, and the negation must extend to the supposed disease and to whatever decides its type and symptoms” (p. 418).

These instructions were given about healing the human body. But is not the biosphere, a complex of integrated living systems, truly a “body”? And is not what happens there the result of collective human thought? In Unity of Good, Mrs. Eddy wrote, “What you see, hear, feel, is a mode of consciousness, and can have no other reality than the sense you entertain of it” (p. 8).

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