Many people have experienced the benefits of the practice of Christian Science. It blesses individuals in every direction. It restores health, spiritualizes one’s thought, brings greater happiness and freedom from fear, and regenerates character. This spiritually scientific, Christian practice involves heartfelt prayer that brings increasing understanding of the truth of God and man. It also requires a heartfelt living of the truth, so far as we comprehend it.

In her discovery of Christian Science, Mary Baker Eddy learned that true, loving thoughts and sincere affirmations of spiritual truth open our thought to the Christ, the message of Truth and Love that brings healing and regeneration. Such genuine practice of Christian Science is a continuing source of health, joy, and safety, as we place our faith in the reality and allness of God, good.

Mrs. Eddy also discovered that the perversion of Christian, scientific prayer—mental arguments that deny truth and maliciously affirm evil about others—can, if it’s not resisted, seem to produce negative, baneful effects. She termed this perversion mental malpractice. This false, self-deluded practice puts its faith in the carnal mind and evil rather than in the reality of divine Mind and its goodness. Because of this, malpractice rests on an illusion and is the indulgence of an illusion. Our sincere practice of Christian Science, and the understanding of truth that this brings, keep us safe from illusory evil, enabling us to prove that man is truly, and forever, under God’s loving government.

The Bible brings out that God is good and supreme, and that God is Mind: “He is in one mind, and who can turn him? and what his soul desireth, even that he doeth.” In the next verse it says that we are governed by this Mind: “For he performeth the thing that is appointed for me: and many such things are with him” (Job 23:13, 14).

The Bible also alerts us, though, to the fraudulent opposite of good, as expressed in the practice of evil. It speaks of those who “bend their tongues like their bow for lies: but they are not valiant for the truth upon the earth; for they proceed from evil to evil, and they know not me, saith the Lord” (Jeremiah 9:3). 

Christ Jesus went further and exposed evil’s mental nature: “Out of the heart,” he said, “proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies” (Matthew 15:19). In the realm of material belief, evil thoughts underlie and produce all evil acts and effects. Evil thoughts, however, cannot become real, so nothing about them or their seeming effects is real.

Being governed by the divine Principle, God, we are not subject to any false influence.

Mrs. Eddy writes about it: “Mental malpractice is a bland denial of Truth, and is the antipode of Christian Science. To mentally argue in a manner that can disastrously affect the happiness of a fellow-being—harm him morally, physically, or spiritually—breaks the Golden Rule and subverts the scientific laws of being.… Its claim to power is in proportion to the faith in evil, and consequently to the lack of faith in good. Such false faith finds no place in, and receives no aid from, the Principle or the rules of Christian Science; for it denies the grand verity of this Science, namely, that God, good, has all power” (Miscellaneous Writings 1883–1896, p. 31).

Being governed by the divine Principle, God, we are not subject to any false influence. If someone is dreaming about us at night in an unkind way, the thoughts in his dream can’t affect us. Similarly, the evil thoughts, motives, and arguments of malpractice cannot get beyond their own dream of a reality apart from God, so they cannot know, find, or reach the loved children of God. Malpractice, therefore, has no power to affect us, because our entire being is forever held in the tender, undisturbed care of our Father-Mother Love.

Jesus reassures us: “Are not five sparrows sold for two farthings, and not one of them is forgotten before God? But even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not therefore: ye are of more value than many sparrows” (Luke 12:6, 7).

Our Father-Mother’s love for us is not just a helpful support. God’s love is a law to our entire being—a law of safety, happiness, clarity of thought, and well-being. There is in actuality no other mind to mislead us, confuse us, cause factions, rob us of our happiness or goodness, fill our thoughts with negativity or fear, or produce any effect in the body. And as we grow in the understanding that God alone is our Mind, we can’t be made even to respond to evil suggestions.

I’ve been grateful to learn over the years, as many have, that by improving our Christian practice of Truth, we can nullify the suggestions of malpractice. Pushy, destructive thoughts fade away as we begin to grasp in prayer that the only Mind governing us is God, good. Physical difficulties are corrected and harmony restored, as we glimpse the truth that we’re not the object of the carnal, mortal mind; instead, we’re the very image of the divine Mind and its harmony.  

The practice of Christian Science calls on us to love more. Spiritual love is central to true practice, and it’s something we all need to continually work at, because it’s not superficial. It’s the recognition of each one’s spiritual goodness. Even a glimpse that our neighbor—or our seeming enemy—is a loved idea of God, entirely good, softens our sense of others. It quells resentment, dissolves hate, and enables us to trust divine Love more. Progress in loving spiritually helps dissolve the fear that someone can harm us. We feel more intuitively the reality and onliness of Love, and the goodness of all of God’s children. 

This growing consciousness of good is a natural defense. Evil thoughts can’t reach us, or find lodging as our own thoughts, when we’re conscious, even in a degree, of the all-presence of good and the nothingness of evil suggestions.

The Psalmist expressed the joy and gratitude to God that we can all increasingly feel: “Oh how great is thy goodness, which thou hast laid up for them that fear thee; which thou hast wrought for them that trust in thee before the sons of men! Thou shalt hide them in the secret of thy presence from the pride of man: thou shalt keep them secretly in a pavilion from the strife of tongues. Blessed be the Lord: for he hath shewed me his marvellous kindness in a strong city” (Psalms 31:19–21).

Through our growing spiritual love for others, and our heartfelt perception of the oneness and allness of the divine Mind—divine good—we increasingly discover that we are always safe in the embrace of divine Love’s care.  

David C. Kennedy