A well-known philosopher was fond of using the term sunsight instead of sunrise in order to be clear that it’s not that the sun comes up but that the rotation of the earth brings it into view. Even so, as easy as this may be to process in our head, it may not be so easy to see with our eyes.

The same might sometimes be said about our practice of Christian Science. Although we may admit to being spiritual, made in the image and likeness of God, divine Spirit, the evidence of our living out a largely matter-based existence, with all its discord and disease, can seem pretty overwhelming.

“I know I’m spiritual,” we might say when praying our way through a challenge. “I’m just not seeing it.”

Being spiritual doesn’t mean that we’re simply inclined to ponder the deeper things in life, but rather that Spirit itself, and not matter, is the very essence of our being. Still, this is often easier said than seen.

It’s incumbent upon us to rely on our God-given spiritual sense for the true view of ourselves and our world.

Try as we may to reconcile this disconnect between what we’re knowing and what we’re seeing—what is and isn’t true, what is and isn’t real—the more effective approach is to set aside, even if for a moment, what the physical senses suggest and to accept as credible only what spiritual sense reveals. This isn’t about burying our head
in the sand but about making way for thought to be lifted out of it.

“Spiritual sense is a conscious, constant capacity to understand God,” writes Mary Baker Eddy (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 209). And it’s our understanding of God’s great love for His wholly spiritual creation that enables us to not just imagine ourselves but to truly see ourselves as He sees us: complete in every way, unimpressed and unrestrained by the suffocating sands of matter-based thinking.

The good news is that this understanding, this true view of reality, isn’t self-generated; it’s God’s gift to us. And although it’s always present, it becomes increasingly apparent as we more fully express such God-sourced qualities of thought as honesty, unselfishness, humility, love, and so on.

There’s plenty of evidence to back this up—certainly in the teachings and healings of Christ Jesus and others throughout the Bible, but just as importantly, in the reports of contemporary Christian healing found in magazines like this one published by The Christian Science Publishing Society.

In one such report, the writer describes praying to be relieved from “intense internal pain.” Despite his prayer, the pain got worse. But during a phone call with a Christian Science practitioner, he found his frustration slowly but surely yielding to a deeper appreciation of God’s “all-pervading goodness and love”—a love that he was not just being encouraged to consider but could actually feel. By the time the call ended, the pain was gone (see Todd Hollenberg, “Internal pain healed,” The Christian Science Journal, December 2023).

Accounts like this illustrate the naturalness of spiritual healing—of the untrue yielding to the true, the unreal yielding to the real—along with our divinely bestowed capacity to see as God sees. Mrs. Eddy describes it this way in Science and Health: “The physical healing of Christian Science results now, as in Jesus’ time, from the operation of divine Principle, before which sin and disease lose their reality in human consciousness and disappear as naturally and as necessarily as darkness gives place to light and sin to reformation. Now, as then, these mighty works are not supernatural, but supremely natural. They are the sign of Immanuel, or ‘God with us,’—a divine influence ever present in human consciousness and repeating itself, coming now as was promised aforetime, 

To preach deliverance to the captives [of sense], 
And recovering of sight to the blind, 
To set at liberty them that are bruised” (p. xi). 

Even when evil appears to be more present and more powerful than good, this “divine influence,” or Christ, is always present to turn our thought to God—to dispel the fear that would blind us to God’s healing love. In so doing, it brings into view the allness of God, good, that was there all along.

It’s impossible for the so-called material senses to take in such a revelation, just as it’s impossible for these same senses to fully perceive that the earth revolves around the sun. This doesn’t mean that this revelation isn’t valid or practical—only that it’s incumbent upon us to rely on our God-given spiritual sense for the true view of ourselves and our world.

This change of view doesn’t happen overnight but step by step—its validity confirmed healing by healing. As this happens, we come to know ourselves and others more and more as God knows us. And then—ultimately, inevitably—to see what we know to be true. 

Eric Nelson, Guest Editorial Writer