In the Gospel of John, Christ Jesus says to his followers, “If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed; and ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free” (8:31, 32).

I remember the first time I was able to demonstrate this biblical promise in my life. I was playing in a game of soccer, and while running for the ball down the sideline, I ran up against the spectator seating, which consisted of old wooden railway sleepers (ties) benched up along the side of the field. I crashed into the sleepers with my knee. It was badly cut, and the pain was excruciating. My friends came to assist me, and I told them I would go off to the changeroom. As I walked off the field, I started thinking to myself what I would do in the changeroom. The answer was, Pray. My life as a Christian Scientist had taught me to turn to the understanding of my true identity, that of a child—a spiritual reflection—of God.  

The thought came to me to consider a specific sentence from the Christian Science textbook, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, written by the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, Mary Baker Eddy. The sentence is the first line of what Mrs. Eddy calls “the scientific statement of being,” and it reads, “There is no life, truth, intelligence, nor substance in matter” (p. 468). I could claim this as true because of God’s infinite and all-powerful presence, which precludes the ills of the flesh. My actual life is in God, Spirit, not in matter. And since God is the only intelligence, how could my material body tell me anything? The only information I could be receptive to as true was what came as thoughts from our heavenly Father. The one supreme God knows only good for His beloved creation. He could not, would not, and did not create a suffering mortal.

As I was thinking these thoughts on the way to the changeroom, I had a healing. The bleeding stopped, the cut closed up, and the pain disappeared. Much to the surprise of my teammates, I returned to the field immediately and continued playing. The next day the only evidence of the occurrence was a slight pink mark on my kneecap, and that disappeared in two days. During this whole experience I was never inconvenienced.

This was a key lesson to me in my study of Christian Science. I realized that the healing came when my thought was yielding to God’s law of perfection and there was no suggestion of injury left in my thinking. Thus, there was no other condition present except God’s idea, which is harmony, or health.

To me, this is what is meant by “knowing the truth.” What is the truth? Christian Science makes clear that it is the law of God. And God’s law doesn’t vary under any conditions. Man’s perfection as the child of God, made in His image and likeness (as we read in the first chapter of Genesis), is unchanged throughout infinity and eternity. As I claimed this law to be operative in my consciousness, the outward result of my inward thought was the manifestation of perfection. My God-given ability was unimpaired, and I was free—free of the bondage of a material concept of myself. The truth had made me free.

Louis E. Benjamin 
Hillcrest, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa