Testimony of Healing January 8, 2018 Issue

Running freely again

Joe Funston

While out for a run last spring, I felt a sharp pain in my calf. I’d had a coach in high school who told us to just run through the pain. Remembering that, I decided to just “run through it.” But after I finished my run, the pain was a lot worse, and I was walking with a visible limp.

I realized that I was working from the standpoint of mind over matter—willing the pain to go away. The word mind in that last sentence is with a lowercase m. Christian Science uses the word mind in two very different ways. With a lowercase m, it refers to imperfect mortal mind. With an uppercase M, it refers to divine Mind, a synonym for God. So, my problem was that I was relying on mortal mind and human will to overcome a manifestation of mortal mind calling itself material—the pain in my calf. In reality, matter is nothing; the only lasting and permanent things are spiritual and are from God.

As Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy explains, “… the phrase mortal mind implies something untrue and therefore unreal; and as the phrase is used in teaching Christian Science, it is meant to designate that which has no real existence” (p. 114). I decided I needed to rely on something other than the nothingness of mortal mind. I needed to rely on divine Mind, God. So rather than “mind over matter,” I knew that it was truly “Mind not matter.”