How do Christian Scientists deal with the troubles of everyday life—things like sickness, loss, wrongdoing? Although Christian Science can comfort and sustain us amid a sea of disturbing relationships, disappointments, and frustrations, there may be times when our challenges seem so real that we feel separated from God. The spiritual good reflected from Him may seem illusive. Even our declarations of truth may lack spiritual conviction.

Instead of becoming discouraged or giving up, this is the time to dig in! When the spiritual relationship that exists between God and His reflection, our real selfhood, is sufficiently understood, spiritual healing inevitably follows. Through the dedicated and persistent study and practice of this Science, spiritual growth does take place, and accompanying this growth, a more spiritual sense of being is achieved.

We see more clearly that God is wholly good, that He is divine Mind, Life, Truth, Love. As Father-Mother, He is the creator of His spiritual universe, including the true selfhood of each one of us. Not a vestige of evil, sin, or discord exists in Him. God's law—His substance, presence, and power—is unchallenged and uninvadable.

Such spiritual truths are a powerhouse for good. But they must be understood and applied if they are to penetrate and destroy the false, human beliefs that make us feel separated from God, as His image. We need to cease believing in error's reality and instead cherish the spiritual idea that the physical senses misrepresent. Our sense of identity should more and more conform to spiritual individuality, and less and less to the discordant and material. The tendency simply to declare the truth of being—the perfection of God and the perfection of man—and yet still to believe that the material characteristics of human thinking are real, and even to indulge in them, needs to be overcome.

Just how is this done?

If we believe that we have a mind of our own, or that someone else does, which can think independently of the only genuine Mind, God, this belief is a seedbed for all sorts of troubles. To this false sense of human personality, feelings such as frustration, disappointment, incompleteness, and impatience may appear real. So might self-aggrandizement, pride, or self-will. Such discordant mental states are often objectified as discordant bodily conditions. So, when spiritual qualities of God's being— such as love, patience, contentment, and joy—become more important to us than the negative, supposititious characteristics and are embodied in thought, God's healing law is utilized. Such spirituality changes thinking and feeling. This is fundamental to spiritual healing.

As Mrs. Eddy explains in Science and Health, "Hatred, envy, dishonesty, fear, and so forth, make a man sick, and neither material medicine nor Mind can help him permanently, even in body, unless it makes him better mentally, and so delivers him from his destroyers."

If there is sin, injustice, or some other unprincipled circumstance in our lives, this needs to be perceived, challenged, and overcome with the spiritual facts of true being. To indulge in sin or error of some sort, and yet to declare there is no sin, is not Christian Science! This sort of behavior needs to be faced up to and corrected.

It's not good to become intoxicated with the truths of Christian Science instead of fulfilling the demands of truth to purify thought and actions. We need to uncover and to correct unscientific mental states and wrongs that are being committed. To utilize effectively God's spiritual, healing law, false beliefs need to be discerned in order to be properly dealt with! This may be a struggle. If this seems to be, we should not feel unworthy of healing. Although overcoming deep-seated, false traits of character does require self-surrender, nothing can defeat man's unquenchable desire for spirituality.

The spiritual antidote to the illusion of having a mind separate from God is the great spiritual fact that the only Ego is Mind —the divine Mind, and not the human. When we come to admit this, we are getting things together. We are well on the road to healing, because we have a more spiritual view of consciousness. Acknowledging the pure spirituality of man's consciousness helps us to disbelieve that the dualism of the human mind is real. This enables us to make the switch from error to truth and so experience healing.

Spiritual awakening to true individuality changes one's concept of oneself and others. It changes one's life for the better. It redeems us from sin and heals disease. Such awakening does not take place through casual study and prayer. It requires heartfelt prayer accompanied with spiritual discipline so that our strivings bear fruit and man's real being is demonstrated. Many have stood in awe when the curtain of material sense lifts and real being is revealed. This unveiling often results in outstanding healing of some sort. The redeemed one often prays, "Father, forgive me for ever believing that I was ever separated from You."

This kind of spiritual regeneration has far-reaching, healing effects. When negative, material thinking is exposed as nothing more than suggestive phases of the Adamic dream and is abandoned for real being, in that degree, even so-called incurable disease is healed. As the Christian Science textbook, Science and Health, says: "We must learn how mankind govern the body,— whether through faith in hygiene, in drugs, or in will-power. We should learn whether they govern the body through a belief in the necessity of sickness and death, sin and pardon, or govern it from the higher understanding that the divine Mind makes perfect, acts upon the so-called human mind through truth, leads the human mind to relinquish all error, to find the divine Mind to be the only Mind, and the healer of sin, disease, death."

Each case in need of healing is individual. Sometimes a case is adversely influenced by individual human experience, past or present. The condition of human consciousness and the surrounding mental influences need to be considered—even though they are not spiritually real or true. The reason for this is that these influences, or the way one reacts to challenges, may be a factor in the case. One can pray fervently to be healed, but unless the action of so-called mortal mind is destroyed with the action of spirituality, spiritual healing is hindered.

Perhaps the most important thing to realize about such healing is that it is deeply Christian. Christ Jesus' teachings were the basis for his healing ministry. These healings were not unexplainable miracles. They were proofs that the Christ—God's nature understood and demonstrated—regenerates and heals. The Master's theology was not a ritual or the product of man-made beliefs. It was the understanding of his at-one-ment with God through the Christ that so richly endowed him with God's healing power. As the expression of God's being, this Christliness healed the sick, reformed the sinner, and raised the dead. It's this theology that Christ Jesus expected his followers to adhere to, with signs following.

According to historical records, the spiritual healing demonstrated by Christ Jesus was an integral part of Christianity for about three hundred years after the crucifixion. Does this not prove that genuine, spiritual healing, as taught and practiced by our Master and explained in Christian Science, does not require the physical presence of our Lord? Doesn't this prove also that the Christ which Jesus exemplified so perfectly—as God's representative—is not dependent upon his physical presence? Why should the Christ not be available today as it was for centuries after the ascension? There was great opposition to spiritual healing in the early years of Christianity. And, today, there is great opposition to the promised Comforter, which St. John states is "the Spirit of truth," and which many accept as Christian Science.

Critics of spiritual healing may find it difficult to grasp. It is not always easy to comprehend the world of Spirit, which the physical senses cannot see, feel, or touch. But when faith, and radical reliance on the power of the truth of being, outweigh false, material sense, and God's moral, spiritual law is adhered to, the human race is blessed. In this way human beings are increasingly proving that Christ, Truth, is their Saviour.

Whatever an individual might believe, or disbelieve, the fact is that hundreds of thousands of responsible citizens have been healed in Christian Science since its discovery in 1866. Today there are many such people who are the fourth and fifth generation of practicing Christian Scientists.

After all, spiritual healing was an essential part of Christendom in its early years, and why isn't it today? Spiritual healing always follows as a natural result of understanding the deeper meanings of the teachings of the Master, which incite us all to conform our thinking and living to God's law—the law of Love.