The sign in front of my apartment complex read, “Seeing is believing!” This advertising slogan was intended to entice prospective tenants to consider living there, but I barely noticed it. I barely noticed anything.

The day my dad passed away, my heart broke. I couldn’t seem to pray. I quit studying the Holy Bible. I stopped going to church. And I began to live recklessly: I rarely ate, kept in constant motion, and was indiscriminate in my social life. But one evening as I walked in the Sonoran Desert under a sherbet sunset sky, I heard in my thought, “Jennifer, seeing is not believing.” And at that moment, I was healed of grief. I felt light again! 

Soon, I was back to my spiritual study. I started attending church again. And I felt God’s presence more than I had before. 

While I felt so blessed by this experience, I often wondered why that simple message, “Seeing is not believing”—clearly from God—had freed me. It wasn’t until a year later that I understood. 

I was in church on Thanksgiving Day, and suddenly I knew. What had broken my heart was that I was seeing and believing something that was not to be believed. I had been impressed by the picture of my dad’s suffering, of his being frightened and sad. But on that walk in the desert, I glimpsed something I had learned from my study of Christian Science: The five physical senses are not reliable sources of information. They cannot tell us what is true about us or our loved ones. God is Truth, so only God can tell us what’s true; through the spiritual sense God has given us, we see and believe what is true. This spiritual discernment brings into focus the divine fact that man is made in the image of God and is therefore spiritual and harmonious. And this is the only seeing that is worthy of believing. 

Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer of Christian Science, explains in her book Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures: “What is termed material sense can report only a mortal temporary sense of things, whereas spiritual sense can bear witness only to Truth. To material sense, the unreal is the real until this sense is corrected by Christian Science” (p. 298).

Only God, as Truth, can tell us what’s true. 

What I had been seeing about my dad was not grounded in spiritual truth but in material misinformation. As I sat in church that morning, I saw more clearly than ever what was true: that my dad was always the expression of Spirit, God, and therefore spiritual; that he was never in healthy or sick matter; that as God’s spiritual reflection, he never suffered. And he was never frightened. Dad was always God’s cherished, protected, perfect child. And this continues to be true, since Life, which is God, is eternal. 

Seeing the truth about my dad had healed my broken heart. It was so liberating! I began to apply this spiritual seeing to tough situations, real time. When I am confronted with frightening pictures of danger, destruction, or misery, I mentally and boldly argue, “Seeing (with the physical senses) is not believing!” And then I dive beneath what the five senses are presenting and discover what God is seeing and knowing about me—about each of His children. 

For example, when I was about to deliver my youngest son, the midwife told me that the umbilical cord had prolapsed and that we must go to the hospital emergency room immediately. At one point en route she said, “You’d better pray the way you do in Christian Science, because I’m pretty sure your baby is dead.” If ever there was a time to rebel against the material picture, this was it. I began insisting out loud: “God is this child’s life, and divine Life is the only Life there is! I will not be convinced otherwise!” I didn’t stop until we reached the hospital. 

The midwife told me later that the other professionals attending the birth had also believed that my son was dead. When they discovered him to be alive and well, they all cried. 

In an essay published in her Miscellaneous Writings 1883–1896, Mrs. Eddy writes, “He is bravely brave who dares at this date refute the evidence of material sense with the facts of Science, and will arrive at the true status of man because of it” (p. 183).

Through the spiritual sense God has given us, we see and believe what is true.

Christ Jesus was certainly “bravely brave,” and he showed us how to be. He never backed down when confronted with material misinformation. His is the perfect example of calmness and fearlessness amid the drama of human experience. I picture Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead. Healing the insane man who lived amongst the tombs of the Gadarenes. Restoring Peter’s mother-in-law to health. And so much more. Never duped by the material picture, Jesus fixed his gaze on the inseparable, indestructible relation of divine Love and Love’s expression, the spiritual identity of everyone. This spiritual understanding of creator and creation enabled Christ Jesus, the Son of God, to demonstrate the healing power of Truth. And it enables us today to demonstrate the healing power of Christ, Truth. 

When we find ourselves struggling with heartbreak, sickness, loss, or other inharmony, it’s worthwhile to ask ourselves, “What is really happening? Am I being impressed by a picture from the five senses, or am I knowing the truth of being that man, God’s idea, has the substance of Spirit and expresses health and wholeness and joy?” 

It takes moral courage to follow Jesus’ example in rebelling against the evidence of the material senses in the face of adversity. But when we most need to hear it, Christ, voicing eternal Truth, comes to the receptive heart with the healing message “Seeing is not believing.” The healing of grief and the healing of my son at his birth continue to be vivid reminders to me that, as Jesus demonstrated, only what God, good, knows of us is to be believed.