One day last year, I woke up with a bloodshot eye. I knew that I could be calm and unafraid, confident that there is no spot where God, good, is not. I called a Christian Science practitioner, an individual who provides metaphysical treatment through prayer for those who request it.

The practitioner shared this passage from Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, Mary Baker Eddy: “Christian Scientists, be a law to yourselves that mental malpractice cannot harm you either when asleep or when awake” (p. 442).

Later in Science and Health, mental malpractice is explained as “the injurious action of one mortal mind controlling another from wrong motives, . . . practised either with a mistaken or a wicked purpose” (p. 451). While there wasn’t another person controlling my thinking, I was perhaps listening to false and limiting thoughts about myself instead of to true thoughts from God.