What’s truly in control of us?

If we’re struggling with a thought we shouldn’t think that leads to doing something we shouldn’t be doing, it can feel as though our life is out of control. 

But what if the real issue isn’t so much a lack of control as a mistaken sense of what it is that controls us? It certainly seems we’re at the mercy of impulses that determine our actions, but it’s worth pondering a thought-provoking idea that suggests that this might not be the case. According to Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy, which articulates the Science of Christ that Jesus’ life and healings demonstrated, “All is under the control of the one Mind, even God” (p. 544). 

The Mind that is God is, logically, the source of thoughts that are godly, therefore good. And the gospel record of Jesus’ healings illustrates the outcome of being controlled by such thinking. Health was restored even in those who had been chronically unwell (see Mark 5:25–34 and John 5:1–9). Jesus proved that God’s benign control was present right where sickness seemed to be. He saw in others what God sees in all: We are each made in the image of God, in whom there is no sickness to be imaged forth. It was Jesus’ clear sense of God being expressed only in the divine likeness that healed.