I am grateful for the many blessings I have received from the study and practice of Christian Science. One healing stands out because of the many lessons I learned and how clearly it proves the efficacy of scientific prayer. It also illustrates the vital work of Christian Science practitioners, on whom we often call to pray with us in extreme situations.

For many years I suffered from hemorrhoids. Initially this affliction involved only slight discomfort, so I ignored it. Bad idea! One summer the condition became severe. I would experience a day of extreme pain or an entire night without sleep or rest. Then the next day or that night I would have temporary relief. The condition was so overwhelming that I was unable to pray effectively for myself when in pain. As I could not read, study, or think clearly, I would spend the time listening to some of the inspiring music—mainly recordings of hymns—provided by The Christian Science Publishing Society. My main fear was that this would be an ongoing disability.

I had often felt pride in being able to handle problems—including health-care issues—through my own prayers, without needing the help of a Christian Science practitioner. Yet in the textbook of Christian Science, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, Mary Baker Eddy warns against such thoughts: “If students do not readily heal themselves, they should early call an experienced Christian Scientist to aid them. If they are unwilling to do this for themselves, they need only to know that error cannot produce this unnatural reluctance” (p. 420).

I finally reached out to my Christian Science teacher and asked her to pray for me. She lovingly said that she would and that I was not to be afraid. She assured me that healing was not a product of how many pages of Christian Science literature I read. During this time in my life, my daily study of Christian Science had become more a checklist of things to do than an enlightening and joyful time of spiritual growth. Even my preparation for my duties as First Reader in my branch Church of Christ, Scientist, had become an intellectual exercise instead of an opportunity to lovingly serve the congregation. My thought needed to be spiritualized.

I can now see more clearly that this experience was an instance of error being stirred up in my thought in order to be destroyed. Science and Health states: “In Isaiah we read: ‘I make peace, and create evil. I the Lord do all these things;’ but the prophet referred to divine law as stirring up the belief in evil to its utmost, when bringing it to the surface and reducing it to its common denominator, nothingness. The muddy river-bed must be stirred in order to purify the stream. In moral chemicalization, when the symptoms of evil, illusion, are aggravated, we may think in our ignorance that the Lord hath wrought an evil; but we ought to know that God’s law uncovers so-called sin and its effects, only that Truth may annihilate all sense of evil and all power to sin” (p. 540). 

I was a professor, and for the first time in decades I was not teaching during the summer or chairing my academic department, which freed me to devote most of my time to my duties as First Reader. This work became more inspiring as I discovered the joy of spiritually understanding God’s Word through the devoted study of the Bible and Science and Health that’s required of a Reader. The rest of my free time was spent praying specifically about this challenge. I ended up missing only one Wednesday testimony meeting at my post. I was always able to prepare for the Sunday service, including practicing with the Second Reader, and to be there on Sunday morning.

As I continued on, I felt I was gaining spiritually—letting go of intellectualism, for example—but the pain was still there. Then one morning it intensified. My teacher told me over the phone that this was chemicalization and that I was healed. Science and Health states: “Here let a word be noticed which will be better understood hereafter,—chemicalization. By chemicalization I mean the process which mortal mind and body undergo in the change of belief from a material to a spiritual basis. 

“Whenever an aggravation of symptoms has occurred through mental chemicalization, I have seen the mental signs, assuring me that danger was over, before the patient felt the change; and I have said to the patient, ‘You are healed,’—sometimes to his discomfiture, when he was incredulous. But it always came about as I had foretold” (pp. 168–169).

To say that I was “incredulous” would be an understatement, but my teacher was exactly right. The pain ended completely that day. It never returned. And the minor symptoms of this disease that I had previously experienced from time to time were also healed and never recurred. This was 25 years ago.

Theodore S. Arrington
Albuquerque, New Mexico, US