Questioner: An individual faced with an extreme health problem—with an incurable disease, for example—wants very much to keep up hope. But many people feel that all a person can do in a case like this is not become too discouraged and perhaps wait for a new cure.

Speaker: It may certainly appear that way. However, no matter what the material circumstances are, I'd want to assure an individual that God's love and power are always present to bring healing. This is a recurring theme throughout the Bible.

Many people, in many different walks of life, have seen proof that hopelessness and incurability are not ordained by God, and that they can be overcome by seeking God's help through prayer.

I think a person under those circumstances would find great comfort in these verses from a Psalm (103:2, 3): "Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits: who forgiveth all thine iniquities; who healeth all thy diseases."

Questioner: Those are comforting words, but what about the individual who's actually faced with the verdict that a disease is incurable?

Speaker: I'm sure a verdict of incurability would be one of the most disquieting things anyone could hear. So if comfort came through the Bible and reassured an individual that there is a presence and a power to heal him, perhaps he would be encouraged to begin to dig deeper into the nature of God and His creation and to see what man is as the spiritual likeness of God. Man has God-given health. He has wholeness, soundness, completeness. This, of course, transcends what we see humanly.

But as one begins through growth in spiritual insight to awaken to a spiritual sense of what God is and of what man is, he can bring God-given health to light in his human experience.

Questioner: What do you mean by "growth in spiritual insight"?

Speaker: I mean, to borrow Paul's analogy, putting off the old man and putting on the new. This invites the individual to change his concept of what man is. And so we're asking the person who is under the verdict of apparent incurability to consider changing his concept, to look deeper, to gain a spiritual insight that man is more than a mortal who's subject to discord. It's much like an individual who, for the first time, sees the difference between his house and his home. It takes a certain amount of insight to feel the difference. As the individual sees that what appears to be his body is not really his identity, he gains spiritual insight into the nature of man as made in the image and likeness of God, divine Mind. He sees that man is the expression of all Godlike qualities This would restore to him a condition of health and wholeness.

This insight is what enables us to wake up from the nightmare of fear to the wholeness and freedom that already belong to man as the likeness of God.

Questioner: But how does this relate to the actual removing of physical disease? Fear is one thing, but in the minds of most people disease is quite another thing.

Speaker: Our deepest convictions about the nature of man have a definite effect on our thought and therefore on our thought and therefore on our bodies. If one views himself as a bundle of matter, subject to disease, hopelessness, and incurability, that kind of fearful thought keeps him from seeing the vast reserve of power—the power of God, unfailing good—that's actually ever present and ever available to man as God's likeness.

It's rather like somebody who believes that the only light available to him is a ten-watt bulb. And yet the same power source that is lighting that low-wattage bulb is right there and sufficient to light up a whole city.

As an individual begins to acknowledge the omnipotent source of good—God, infinite Spirit or divine Mind—continually expressed in order, intelligence, harmony, and right action, he sees that man as God's spiritual likeness is really unfettered by discord or disease.

Questioner: A very different concept again. You're talking about a change of concept.

Speaker: Yes, looking deeper. It's like seeing the home rather than the house. The concept of a material mortal called a man changes to the idea of man as the embodiment of every Godlike quality. Through spiritual insight we gain a new concept of man. We begin to let go of fear and despondency and in a growing degree to express man's God-given soundness and wholeness in every aspect of our human experience. As Christ Jesus said (John 8:32), "Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free."

Questioner: Do you feel this was the basis of the healings of Jesus?

Speaker: I think it unquestionably was. His spiritual insight, his clear understanding of the truth of man's Godlike nature, was the foundation of his vital ministry of healing.

In Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures Mary Baker Eddy writes (pp. 476, 477): "Jesus beheld in Science the perfect man, who appeared to him where sinning mortal man appears to mortals. In this perfect man the Saviour saw God's own likeness, and this correct view of man healed the sick."

Questioner: It is a little hard to believe that a mere change of concept can have some of the profound effects you speak of.

Speaker: Well, I know of men and women who through growth in spiritual insight have been healed of what would be considered hopeless conditions—cancer, arthritis, heart disease, stroke.

Let me tell you about a woman I know of who had an organic condition that specialists said was incurable. She had severe digestive problems, involving a spastic colon, which the specialists could not correct. They said she would be sick as long as she lived. Along with medicine a very rigid diet was prescribed, but with no hope of cure. In her discouragement she grew to feel that if she had to go on like that life itself really wasn't worth living.

At this point an acquaintance of hers brought her a copy of Science and Health to read. As she studied it, she began to see something of man's God-given nature, and that freed her from fear. She says that from the very beginning of her reading she discerned that man was not merely a bundle of matter subject to disease and discord but that he was the expression of God, responsive to God's power and love. She saw that as the spiritual likeness of God she expressed health and soundness, and that God, not a material body, was in control.

That evening she ate a normal dinner without fear, and she continued to eat normally. She discarded her medicine. She felt well. In a short time the spastic colon condition completely faded away. She's been in excellent health ever since. And that was some ten years ago.

As an individual grows in spiritual insight, as he yields to God's love and power and strives prayerfully and persistently to see what God is always knowing of man, he'll find this transformation of thought occurring in his own consciousness. He will be able to see beyond incurability and let go of hopelessness and fear.