The Science of invariable laws

Looking to be a better healer? Then you’ll want to keep an eye out for articles like this one, appearing periodically in the Sentinel, The Christian Science Journal, and The Herald of Christian Science. Their aim: to correct some of the misconceptions about Christian Science that would keep us from having the results we so desire.

When I left teaching political science to be a Christian Science practitioner, friends asked why the change in my career. My short answer was, “I prefer hard science to soft science.” Hard science is based on laws that never change.

Many things change over time. Fashions change, language changes, the acorn becomes a stately oak. Our deeply held tastes change without our even being conscious of it. 

But there are certain things that never change. The exactitude of Pythagoras’ theorem has remained unchallenged for well over two thousand years, but the mathematical truth that Pythagoras discovered and articulated has been provably true forever. 

The teachings of Christ Jesus fall into this latter category—they are eternally true. And he expected all of his followers throughout time to be capable of healing the sick. In fact, Jesus counseled his students regarding the signs that “shall follow them that believe,” including that “they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover” (Mark 16:17, 18).

This was a statement of spiritual law—something consistently true. Jesus understood that there are laws of God that govern health and wholeness, laws that arise from the infinite goodness of God, divine Spirit, and the expression of that goodness in all that God creates. The Master practiced healing in accord with these laws and taught them to his disciples, and his disciples, in turn, taught them to many others. These timeless laws that he taught are as valid today as they were two thousand years ago, when Jesus so fully proved them. The fundamentals on which these laws are based are as solid today as in Jesus’ time, and are as useful and practical.

It was this insight that encouraged Mary Baker Eddy, a dedicated student of Jesus’ teachings, to call her discovery explaining the laws underlying his teachings and works a science—Christian Science. Science is the structure and operation of a system of provable laws. That these laws always work is what makes them scientific.  

A couple of years after I learned about the Pythagorean theorem, I was competing on my high school swim team and came down with a severe ear infection. I had more recently learned that there was this divine Science that explained the logic of Jesus’ healing activity. I enthusiastically chose to apply that Science, Christian Science, to be healed. 

I contacted a woman whose full-time profession was to apply these laws as the basis for healing. She was a Christian Science practitioner. She explained to me what might be called the spiritual law of reflection. This law states that man’s relation to God is as exact as that of a reflection in a mirror to the object being reflected. Thus, if what is being reflected is God, then the reflection, man, is totally Godlike.

In this way, I could understand myself as the Bible describes man—as made in God’s image and likeness. That involved shifting from a mental picture of myself as a chunk of flesh and bones to an awareness of my true identity as totally Godlike, totally spiritual. This new view enabled me to understand myself as being not only Godlike and perfect but also forever maintained in perfection by my creator, God.

I began to realize that what was being demanded of me was a radical change in my self-identification: seeing myself not as physical but as purely spiritual, God-created and God-maintained and governed entirely by scientific, spiritual laws. 

I began to understand these new (to me) ideas and that these laws comprised a structure of timeless laws—an eternal Science. This wasn’t easy. I had spent years refining my consciousness of myself as a combination of flesh and bones that moved especially fast in freestyle sprints. However, I soon realized that this new redefining of my identity was a form of prayer. 

My swimming coach saw things differently. He feared permanent damage to my ear, especially when he noticed that I had begun to lose my sense of balance. But I found the logic of this Science compelling. I began thinking in terms of laws of health and harmony, and it gradually became clear that these were the same laws that Jesus had demonstrated in his healing practice.

The healing of the ear was gradual but sure, and I was able to complete the swim season. Further, despite my swim coach’s fears that I would have permanent damage to my eardrum, I was recently certified as an advanced open water deep-sea diver.  

In Eddy’s day, over one hundred years ago, many people believed that Jesus’ ability to heal had been limited to him and, to a lesser extent, his immediate students. But Eddy discovered that Jesus had taught his students the laws that governed every aspect of their lives—and the life of every individual creation of God. 

What I was beginning to understand was the eternal viability of these laws that Jesus taught. Theories about how the physical body operates have changed substantially over the centuries. But the teachings of Jesus, as discovered and practiced by Eddy, remain intact—in other words, are wholly scientific—and are just as invariable and valid today. Eddy wrote, “If Christianity is not scientific, and Science is not of God, then there is no invariable law, and truth becomes an accident” (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 342).

Eddy had total confidence in the invariable nature of the laws that Jesus demonstrated, because she was able to prove them, too. In the few generations that have passed since she proved these laws to be totally intact, they are still being applied with the same efficacy—true today and forever.