Are healing and curing synonymous terms? What is the relationship between healing and curing? I considered these questions from a different perspective after attending the symposium "Spirituality and Healing in Medicine" ^{Conference sponsored by Harvard Medical School and The Mind/Body Institute, Deaconess Hospital, December 3–5, 1995, under the direction of Herbert Benson, M.D. See reports in the Sentinel, January 15, 1996, and in The Christian Science Journal, February 1996.} last December in Boston.

At this conference, it was encouraging to see the serious search for spiritual answers by so many people professionally engaged in caring for the sick and alleviating suffering. One issue that was brought up on several occasions was put forward not only by medical professionals but also by members of the clergy. It was suggested that while prayer and spiritual means can clearly be shown to bring significant healing to a patient, they may not always bring a cure. In other words, from this vantage point, spiritual healing is believed to be a force that does make an important difference in a person's life—the individual may consequently feel closer to God, more at peace, more forgiving, or gain a sense of deeper meaning and purpose to existence. Even so, such an approach to healing, some felt, shouldn't be expected to prove itself as a consistently reliable method for actually curing disease, or restoring broken bodies, or eliminating physical pain.

Perhaps this view of spiritual healing is held because the cure of disease through prayer is still believed by many to be in the realm of miracles; that is, it is thought to represent a random occurrence that one cannot reasonably expect to be repeated with confidence or accuracy. Or it may also be that those who have felt called to minister to the sick have personally witnessed so much tragic illness that it appears inescapable to them that "healing" must often be defined as something other than curing. From that basis, it would only seem natural to assume that no matter how fervently one petitions God for healing, if a cure isn't realized, then either the healing must be explained in different terms or God isn't hearing or isn't answering those prayers. One speaker at the conference, for example, who tenderly told of her husband's death from a terminal illness, also shared what she felt certain was the healing that had occurred—the peace and closeness to God he gained during his last months.

Such healing of the spirit is important, and even essential. Yet, as was also noted at the conference, absolute trust in the power of God, together with a spiritual understanding of His law, has healed every sort of illness. And to appreciate fully the potential of spiritual means in treating disease, it's useful to consider a Christianly scientific approach and what it reveals about the relationship of healing and curing.

Two Scriptural examples can serve as points of reference. One is found in the Hebrew Scriptures, known to Christians as the Old Testament. There in the book of Psalms, the inspired writer extends both hope and promise to those who would trust in the one God. "Bless the Lord, O my soul," the Psalmist sings, "and all that is within me, bless his holy name. Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits: who forgiveth all thine iniquities; who healeth all thy diseases; who redeemeth thy life from destruction" (Ps. 103:1–4).

The second Scriptural example extends throughout the four Gospels of the New Testament and the book of Acts. This example is found in the cumulative record of the healing works of Christ Jesus and his earliest students. Here one reads of radical and complete cures of blindness, deafness, paralysis, disfigured and crippled bodies, epilepsy, leprosy, hemorrhage, fever, insanity. In not one of the instances as recorded, does the individual in need of healing go away from Jesus or his disciples better only in that person's mental, emotional, or spiritual condition without there being a concomitant cure of the broken body or the physical disease.

According to Christian Science—the demonstrable Science of Christ, or God's law—healing in its broadest sense is surely deeper than cure, but it is not separate from cure. Healing is fundamentally centered on salvation. And it is a salvation from all the sins and all the ills "that flesh is heir to." The Science of Christ does not accept incurability as a reasonable, necessary, or viable outcome of the law of God. God's will must absolutely express His own nature. As infinite, eternal good and divine Spirit, God creates, establishes, and maintains only that which exhibits the conditions of divine goodness and pure spirituality. God's man—our own true being—is therefore wholly good and wholly spiritual. Disease and its apparent causes and symptomatology are so devoid of good and so contrary to the nature of perfect Spirit that they clearly cannot be extensions of God's will. And they cannot be any part of His highest creative outcome, His own pure image and likeness, man.

The nature of God is universal, divine Love. Such all-encompassing, all-embracing Love could never desire or design sickness, pain, or tragedy for its children. The very nature of Love is to care for its creation. The result of that Love in human experience is to cure the sick. Divine Love manifests the pure mothering and comforting qualities. The relation of God and man, Love and expression, understood, is a powerful force for transforming thought, redeeming hearts, and healing bodies. The grace of infinite Love is completely capable of healing "all thy diseases." In the textbook of Christian Science, which explains God's laws and their application to the cure of disease, Mary Baker Eddy writes: "The power of Christian Science and divine Love is omnipotent. It is indeed adequate to unclasp the hold and to destroy disease, sin, and death" (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p.412).

The spiritual means of treating disease in Christian Science, based on pure love, the grace of God, and an understanding of His laws, is safe, effective, reliable, consistent. Mrs. Eddy, who discovered the Science of Christianity, writes of the tests to which she herself submitted her spiritual method of healing sickness. In Science and Health, she states: "After a lengthy examination of my discovery and its demonstration in healing the sick, this fact became evident to me,—that Mind governs the body, not partially but wholly. I submitted my metaphysical system of treating disease to the broadest practical tests. Since then this system has gradually gained ground, and has proved itself, whenever scientifically employed, to be the most effective curative agent in medical practice" (pp. 111–112).

There remains no question that in the theology and practice of Christian Science, the healing of disease points emphatically to the absolute power of God and His Christ to destroy sin. Reformation and redemption are central to the success and the purpose of scientific Christian healing. Yet, again, this deeper purpose is not separate from Love's provision of an always potent, always available curative agent in times of sickness.

Divine Love cares for each of us. The law of God heals. And the cure of disease is naturally to be expected in each case treated through prayer and God's laws.

William E. Moody