One day, I fell on the sidewalk outside my home. All of the injuries cleared up very quickly through prayer as taught in Christian Science—all, that is, except one. My ankle was still hurting two months later, making it difficult to walk.

I lived a mile from where I worked, and driving was not an option. In addition, my job required me to be on my feet and walk a lot during the day. As I was walking to work one morning, I thought, “You’d better stop all this walking, or you’ll do permanent damage.” 

Immediately, though, I had another thought: that you can’t damage 2+2=4. No matter how many times you insist that 2+2=5, or 7, or 10, or anything other than 4, the correct answer remains the same. With that, I started to laugh. It was ridiculous to think you could damage the principles of mathematics by doing a math problem incorrectly!