We can do something about it
When I was healed of a sinus infection about 20 years ago, it was not the first time I’d experienced complete healing from Christian Science treatment—but it was the turning point where I first understood the reliable divine Principle behind it. The Christian Science practitioner I called asked me to consider slowly each line of the Lord’s Prayer, which I did, and the healing was quick and complete. Not only did I throw out my medications with the confidence that I would never need them again, but I was freed from the belief that there are some things that you just can’t do anything about. My life would never be the same.
If you can pick up a pencil from a table, it makes no significant difference to pick up two pencils at the same time. Right? But if you are an ant trying to move a pencil, then moving two pencils is much harder! Christianly scientific prayer changes thought from the perspective of the ant—to whom some things are just too big to be dealt with—to the vantage point of almighty God, Truth, to whom nothing is impossible.
Scientific prayer is not just human will, or a really big ant. It inherently recognizes the power and providence of Truth to adjust things in just the right way, without our trying to configure the details.
Is it harder for God to close a concentration camp than to heal congestion?
At the beginning of Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures Mary Baker Eddy drew a sharp distinction between Christian Science and modes of thought and prayer that “regard the human mind as a healing agent.” She said unequivocally that “this mind is not a factor in the Principle of Christian Science” (p. x ). The Principle of Christian Science is Almighty God. Christ Jesus said, “If you have faith like a grain of mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move, and nothing will be impossible for you” (Matthew 17:20, English Standard Version). The littlest seed of understanding moves the biggest mountain since it’s not the human mind that heals, but divine Principle. The book of Isaiah says, “He taketh up the isles as a very little thing” (Isaiah 40:15 ).
I was talking recently with a dear friend about the profound humanitarian crisis in North Korea, where hundreds of thousands of people are held in prison camps and starved, tortured, and worked to death. Understandably overwhelmed by the apparent magnitude of the problem, my friend repeated what so many people believe—that one person can’t really do anything about it. Those words drove home a question for me: Is it harder for God to close a concentration camp than to heal congestion or cancer? If I say yes, then I am thinking from the perspective of an ant trying to move a pencil. But divine Science allows us to argue out from the standpoint of omnipotence, not up to it. Since the power of scientific prayer to heal physical illness is possible, the ability of that same scientific prayer to heal a situation like that in North Korea is also obvious, as is the moral demand to do it.
In Christian Science we are not asking God to do something. We are seeking to see what, by definition, God already is, and consequently is doing, and even (when we’re ready to admit it) what He has already done. When I suffered from the sinus infection, the notion that God fills all space seemed at first unbelievable and impossible, since congestion seemed at the time to be filling me instead. Yet that truth, at the level of prayer, removed the condition. A few years later, when I became ill, it seemed to be asking a lot to recognize that God fills all space, since it appeared that tumors were occupying space in my physical body at that time. Still, that same truth, at the level of prayer, removed them. To where? To nowhere. They didn’t have to go anywhere anymore than darkness needs to go into the hallway when you turn on a light. God fills all space, so there’s no room at all for anything unlike Him.
The same spiritual idea must hold true for a concentration camp. If I think that a concentration camp is more difficult to remove, then it’s because I believe that God might not be occupying that particular space right now, or might not be inclined to end pain, or might not be omnipotent. Every healing that has ever been experienced in Christian Science has already proved all of those fears false.
The experience of Christian healing has made me certain that there is always “something you can do.” What a privilege it is to know how to pray scientifically—and to get to work doing it.