He wasn’t anticipating all the rattled nerves that today’s banking crisis has triggered. He’d never heard of Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac—the twin rival corporations so important to the stability of the banking industry and so vulnerable to ongoing troubles in the US housing market. But the author of the book of Job in the Bible offers real comfort. In the briefest of passages the book gives this far-reaching assurance: “Thou shalt be secure, because there is hope” (Job 11:18).

Rather than speeding right past that, or dismissing it as quaint idealism, it’s worth a few moments of consideration. The Bible is as plain as it could be both on the promise and on the rock-solid fact underpinning that promise. The promise? You shall be secure. The underpinning to that promise? There is hope. The spiritual reasoning here goes deep. A superficial reading—an assessment only of physical data, balance sheets, expectations of the stock market, and the mood of the banking industry—simply isn’t comprehensive enough and might wrongly dismiss the power of God-derived hope.

But look deeper. There are profound spiritual facts that need to be reckoned with. Take those facts into account, and the prognosis grows brighter. There is hope because there is a heavenly Father who cares for you. There is hope because this heavenly Father is also the divine Principle of the universe and maintains order throughout this universe. There is hope because the Father’s care is tangible and practical and keeps His creation in perfect balance—without excess and definitely without deficiency. There is hope because there is the certainty of good that His presence and power bring to our lives. There is hope because this Principle governs everything there is to govern, down to the smallest details. There is hope because this Principle, God, provides us with His Science, His law. And His Science maintains the productivity of even the largest aspects of creation.

And because there is hope, “thou shalt be secure.” This is a promise that has scientific certainty to it. The Almighty Himself backs it. That’s more reliable backing than even the very solid support the Fed may give to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Monitor founder Mary Baker Eddy discovered the divine Science of God—what Christ Jesus spoke of as the Comforter, or Spirit of truth. She wrote in her primary work on Christian Science, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, “Security for the claims of harmonious and eternal being is found only in divine Science” (Science and Health, p. 232). And because this Science and the hope it offers exists everywhere, the security we need is universally available.

These spiritual facts have a practical effect and can bring security and stability to the banking crisis. But it’s not quite enough for these facts to be true. In order for us to feel their effect in our lives, they have to be realized in prayer as true. They must be known with spiritual conviction as true. Then it is enough. Taking some moments to affirm the presence and power of Principle and the security-enhancing operation of divine Science has a problem-solving impact. The spiritual fact of hope-based security begins to show up in daily life. Then not just the person praying, but society as a whole, is benefited.

The Bible speaks of “the carnal mind”—a supposititious mentality committed to an ultimately hopeless view of life. This carnal mind tries to crowd out hope by sowing doubt and uncertainty into humanity’s outlook. The good news? The hope that springs from knowing the Divine can’t be crowded out. So, nothing the carnal mind can do will ever undo divinely based security. God’s security is woven through His creation. That means stability and security are on hand throughout your life. You can affirm that to be true even before you see the evidence of its truth. As you do so, your own life will grow steadier. And your prayers will also help put the banking industry on firmer ground.

“I wasn’t even sure I should come tonight,” the young mom said. “Gas is so expensive, and we’ve been worried about my husband’s job.” Her comments resonated. We’ve all seen gas and food prices steadily rising, and the news reports a higher jobless rate and an economic slowdown.

To provide another perspective, a friend shared with the mom her own experience shortly after she and her husband got married. Both of them had substantially lowered incomes—the wife as she relocated to a job in a new state, and the husband as two temporary jobs were completed. In those first months of their marriage, by mid-month they were trying to figure out how to make do with less money than they needed for their expenses.

The wife was fearful. She’d never been on such shaky ground financially. But her husband was sure that God would supply what they needed. On the surface, that confidence might appear absurd and not very practical. But both husband and wife felt they knew about God from their study of the Bible. They knew of God’s practical providing in people’s lives.

The Psalmist almost scolds his readers for doubting God’s ability to care for them, asking, “Can God furnish a table in the wilderness?” (Ps. 78:19). He reminds them of how God provided to the children of Israel water (from a rock!) and food (from out of nowhere), and how He had guided them safely in their long journey—clear evidence of God’s continuing ability to supply what they needed.

Jesus consistently trusted God’s ability to provide what was needed. His knowledge of God’s infinite fathering Love was shown practically when he fed thousands with a few loaves of bread and some small fish. He found tax money in a fish’s mouth, and he always had food and lodging for himself and his disciples, although he apparently never had a paycheck.

The newlyweds were sure that God was still God, so it was natural for them to trust Him to “furnish a table” in their wilderness. Being grateful for all the good already evidenced in their lives helped keep them from being afraid. They were also trusting that it was really God’s power and love providing for them, and they were careful not to think that it was an employer’s paycheck that was meeting their needs. A subtle distinction perhaps, but the couple felt it was very important. They each worked to use their God-given talents and to serve God. Payment was natural for such service. Grateful as they were for those paychecks, they were consciously giving over their care to God.

They came to see that they needed to change not only their expectations but also their behavior to be more principled, more God-centered. So at the beginning of the month they put aside a small amount to save, money to pay on a debt, and money they wanted to contribute to their church. The wife vowed they’d happily eat the humblest thing she could think of for the whole month if necessary. She was no longer afraid. They went forward with their prayers and their plan.

Within a year, both husband and wife had substantial salary increases. The debt was paid off, their monthly savings increased, and there was always money for expenses and church contributions. The wife was never again afraid of not having enough income to meet their needs. And there always was enough. They were very grateful.

In the book Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, Mary Baker Eddy wrote, “To those leaning on the sustaining infinite, to-day is big with blessings” (Science and Health, p. vii). That sustaining infinite is, of course, God. And to trust Him to care for us in every way is a powerful response to the doubts and fears generated by media reports or personal evidence of any limitation of good in our lives. God is Love, infinite Love—a fathering-mothering Love. He is fully willing and fully able to care for each of us as His dear children.

So whenever fear nags at your thought saying, Can God really take care of us? The answer is, Yes.

Article from the CS Monitor.

June 15. A teenage girl goes to sea, participating in a wilderness program for young people. She’ll help sail a 120-foot, tall-masted schooner on a three-week voyage on the open ocean. She has no sailing experience, but will be instructed in all aspects of running the ship, and will be expected to help with even challenging tasks such as climbing the rigging to set and strike the sails. Her mom and dad hug her good-bye, joyfully anticipating a wonderful experience for her and promising to pray for her every day. Her mother reminds her of a verse from the Bible: “I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me” (Phil. 4:13).

June 22. The girl’s father tries to get information on how the trip is going, but there’s no news. Her mother remains unconcerned, confident of their daughter’s safety. She has an abiding trust that wherever her daughter is, God is there, too, shepherding her—protecting, guiding, and sustaining her. She knows this divine Love to be a constant—an ever-present Principle—that will be there for her daughter in any kind of trouble. The Bible says, “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble” (Ps. 46:1).

Her mother has seen proof of this before. Several years ago, for example, her college-age son drove cross-country with a load of expensive music equipment in the back of his pickup truck. During his trip, late one evening, the mother experienced something unusual. Thoughts of God’s care for her son began to wash into her consciousness without any initiative on her part. Thoughts of his inseparability from God—from divine Life and Love—and of God’s deep love for him. Wave after wave of these holy ideas kept coming for an hour or two, gently but persistently. The mother cherished these thoughts, in awe of what she recognized as angel messages. Finally, when the mother was completely at peace about her son’s safety, the thoughts subsided.

Later, she learned that her son’s truck had broken down. It was towed to a garage where it would be repaired the next morning. Not wanting to leave his music equipment unattended, the young man decided to spend the night in the truck. He was in an apparently rough part of town, and at first he couldn’t sleep for uneasiness. But after a while, he felt at peace, and the night passed without incident. He also told his mother that his dog affectionately licked him all night! His mother believed that the peace her son felt was a reflection of divine Love’s presence and care for him.

July 5. The sea voyage is over. The girl is back on land. She greets her parents with smiles and tales of adventure. She did climb the rigging, assign tasks as watch leader, and acquire skill as a helmsman. There’s a new confidence in her expression. She tells about a squall when lightning struck within a tenth of a mile from the ship. The mother thanks God, with no thought of what might have happened. Later, the mother asks, “Was there a time when you felt God’s presence?”

“Oh, yeah, the entire trip,” the daughter replies.

A favorite psalm reads: “Whither shall I go from thy spirit? or whither shall I flee from thy presence? If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there: if I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there. If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea; even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me” (139:7–10).

And Mary Baker Eddy, who founded Christian Science, wrote: “God is universal; confined to no spot, defined by no dogma, appropriated by no sect. Not more to one than to all, is God demonstrable as divine Life, Truth, and Love; and His people are they that reflect Him—that reflect Love. Again, this infinite Principle, with its universal manifestation, is all that really is or can be; hence God is our Shepherd. He guards, guides, feeds, and folds the sheep of His pasture; and their ears are attuned to His call. In the words of the loving disciple, ‘My sheep hear my voice, … and they follow me; … neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand’” (Miscellaneous Writings 1883–1896, pp. 150–151).

Affirming this diligently for children, we can do a lot toward making their safety seen and felt.

Sometimes humility gets a bad rap, as though it were akin to servility. On the contrary, humility is allied to divine power. As Tryon Edwards, a 19th-century American theologian, put it, “True humility is not an abject, groveling, self-despising spirit; it is but a right estimate of ourselves as God sees us.”

Jesus would have agreed. Quick to credit God for his accomplishments, Jesus constantly redirected attention from himself to God.

Jesus was arguably the most humble—and most powerful—man of all time. After healing a man who’d been lame for 33 years, he said, “The Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father do: for what things soever he doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise” (John 5:19). Later, as if to underscore the point, he added, “I can of mine own self do nothing.”

But Jesus’ insistence upon crediting God for his achievements suggests more than humility. It shows his clear understanding of his identity as the Son of God. He described that divine kinship when he said, “I and my Father are one” (John 10:30).

In her primary work, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, Mary Baker Eddy amplified Jesus’ statement of his oneness with God, explaining that they were “one in quality, not in quantity.” Then she added, “As a drop of water is one with the ocean, a ray of light one with the sun, even so God and man, Father and son, are one in being” (Science and Health, p. 361).

No one has ever lived the Christ as fully as Jesus did. But the Christ neither began with Jesus’ birth nor ended with his ascension. As Mrs. Eddy explained, “Throughout all generations both before and after the Christian era, the Christ, as the spiritual idea, —the reflection of God,—has come with some measure of power and grace to all prepared to receive Christ, Truth” (Science and Health, p. 333).

From a spiritual perspective, we have every right to be among those “prepared to receive Christ, Truth.” Each of us is God’s child. The first chapter of Genesis confirms this, stating, “God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them” (Gen. 1:27).

As the image of God, divine Spirit, we’re purely spiritual. We may not always feel that way, but the way we feel doesn’t change the way God created us. Rather, the change needed is a better understanding of ourselves (and others) as God’s creation. The more fully we grasp that truth, the more prepared we are to live in unity with our divine source, just as Jesus did.

Mrs. Eddy described this spiritualization of thought as becoming a “transparency for Truth”: “The manifestation of God through mortals is as light passing through the window-pane. The light and the glass never mingle, but as matter, the glass is less opaque than the walls. The mortal mind through which Truth appears most vividly is that one which has lost much materiality—much error—in order to become a better transparency for Truth” (Science and Health, p. 295).

Jesus so fully understood his oneness with God that he carries the title Christ Jesus, which denotes his Godlike nature. None of us is known by the title Christ, but we can live more Christlike lives by becoming better transparencies for Truth. In fact, Jesus urged us to do just that. He said, “Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven” (Matt. 5:16).

As the light of Christ shines through us, we redirect attention from ourselves to God, giving credit where credit is due. What’s more, as our good works glorify God, we demonstrate our oneness with Him, just as Jesus did.

As new technologies shrink our world, loving cooperation among peoples and nations becomes more imperative. What happens on the other side of the globe affects us as never before, and vice versa. There is a great need for looking intelligently at this interaction so that all will find a more universal blessing from globalization and not fear it.

A recent story in the Monitor presents some of the problems that demand global cooperation. It begins, “The long trend toward open trade and global markets is under new stress as problems from food shortages to climate change test its staying power” (“As G-8 meets, free trade under fire,” July 7). While prayers for our world do not outline specific and political ways to deal with globalization issues, they do enhance our ability to live together peacefully and productively and to find the necessary answers.

Many people from all over the world adhere to the counsel to “love thy neighbour as thyself” (Matt. 19:19). Today the world is becoming one grand neighborhood. This may enlarge the challenges of loving our neighbor as ourselves, but it also enlarges the rewards. We need to keep this in mind as we work through specific problems that only a genuine, unselfish, neighborly love can solve.

“Whatever holds human thought in line with unselfed love, receives directly the divine power,” wrote Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of the Monitor (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 192). The desire to live globally and peacefully does indeed “hold human thought in line with unselfed love” and lets the power of this love bless universally. We can count on this divine power to “unself” the motives of all engaged in equalizing the benefits of a global economy. The challenge of unemployment in the home country, which results when jobs are shipped to other countries where salaries are lower, must be met intelligently. Certainly there is no real value in merely moving unemployment from one country to another.

The Monitor article cited above also quotes United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon as saying, “Never in recent memory has the global economy been under such stress. More than ever, this is the moment to prove that we can cooperate globally to deliver results: in meeting the needs of the hungry and the poor, in promoting sustainable technologies for all, in saving the world from climate change—and in keeping the global economy growing.”

It’s obvious that both the developing and developed nations must face these universal problems together. This is not the time when any nation can withdraw into a world of its own. Problems such as climate change affect everyone. It may appear that other issues, such as food shortages, belong more to developing countries. In the long run, all earth’s citizens, being neighbors, must work together for the good of all.

Individuals, one by one, are having experiences preparing them to think, pray, and live globally.

Several years ago, a woman toured many countries and four continents with a program on spiritual healing. Through these meetings, often employing interpreters, she learned there were many similarities in the problems these countries were facing. Even more instructive to her were the many times in which she found that the same spiritual truths were used in their prayers for their individual nations, underscoring that there is one God.

The woman states that from that time on she has recognized more keenly the brotherhood of all humanity and the divine power this brotherhood exercises in solving world problems. She feels that what is true in her experience is also true in the lives of people worldwide. We are being prepared to live globally and to give up what might be considered merely selfish personal and national interests.

Growing from “I and my” to “we and our” moves us out of limited living to inhabit a globe of limitless possibilities for all. While this won’t be accomplished overnight, our prayers, and not our fears, make universal progress possible.

Instability on the stock market, the weak dollar, and a certain amount of financial fragility abroad—along with verbal and financial speculation about oil prices—are giving people the jitters. The result is fear and a growing pessimism about the economic future of the United States and the world at large. It’s important not to let this fear continue to grow. Economies are not blessed when people are fearful. In fact, prayer to deny fear in any field of action is a necessity.

While there are no stories in the Bible of stock markets saved through prayer, there are plenty of people who were protected—who had the money or other means that they needed for survival. A common element in many of these accounts is an individual’s desire to be honest, to do right, and to love God.

Speaking of her own times—which bear an uncanny resemblance to ours—Mary Baker Eddy wrote: “This period is not essentially one of conscience …. This is a period of doubt, inquiry, speculation, selfishness; of divided interests, marvellous good, and mysterious evil” (Miscellaneous Writings 1883–1896, p. 237).

Looking at our times through this lens reveals the same characteristics. Nations seem fragmented into competing interests, and speculators take advantage of business and political weaknesses. Divided goals make a unified response to financial threats more difficult. Looking to material conditions and projections seems to be the only practical approach to prosperity.

The Bible begs to differ. It recounts experiences individuals had of food that should have run out, but didn’t, of oil that multiplied, of water that appeared in abundance in the desert in response to prayers from people who desired to be honest, to do right, and to love God.

They were, to some extent, perceiving that behind creation there is a divine intelligence, or Mind, that brings everyone and everything together. Mind transcends local, national, and even international agendas. Its only agenda is good. As the supreme intelligence of the universe, it enables us to act wisely, to make good choices, and to remain calm in the midst of financial challenges. To pray to see oneself and others as subject to this one Mind—not out of any desire to get one’s own way but out of love for humanity—is to realize that in Mind there can be no division because Mind is the source of all oneness.

Mind, being God, can include only good, and it is always pure. As we live in harmony with Mind, it’s natural for us, as the children of this Mind, to experience goodness and purity because this is what Mind is giving us all the time. Mind protects its children from speculative ventures, from doubt and fear, from loss and lack. Specifically praying for our families, communities, and nations and affirming the spiritual reality of the one Mind, governing them, can only bless each one.

There is another side to the conditions of these times. Mrs. Eddy wrote, “But sin can only work out its own destruction; and reform does and must push on the growth of mankind” (Miscellaneous Writings, p. 237). To build a house or a business on speculation, greed, or division instills in it the seeds of its own destruction. Only reliance on Spirit offers true stability and peace.

That doesn’t mean, however, that those who have built in this way are lost. It is possible to change direction, to become supporters of stability instead of fear. To embrace goodness instead of materialism and greed. Doing this allies one with Christ, the spiritual idea of God that reforms and redeems—and also uplifts all people to see God’s ever-present supply for their needs.

Everyone affected by financial challenges can act intelligently and wisely to restore stability. Obedience to the one Mind’s guiding will help them make their way. As we turn thought in this more spiritual direction—toward Spirit and away from the pull of matter—the individuals involved will be sustained even if they hit some bumpy places on the road to stability. More than this, such prayer will help restore both stability and prosperity to our world.

Adapted from www.spirituality.com.

Seeing each other’s spiritual identity moves us beyond racism.

Racial division and fears are not unique to the United States, where rifts so often form along lines of color. As events in Rwanda and other parts of Africa have shown, rivalries between tribes, ethnic groups, religions, or other differences also keep people apart. Fear, which is so often at the heart of such differences, leads to devaluing individual human beings—no matter what their color—and classifying them as “other.”

Everyone has a role in healing the world’s ills.

This entire outlook cannot be accepted, especially at a time when the world so needs everyone’s talents. Everyone has a role in making peace, saving energy, providing honest leadership, healing the world’s ills. Instead of suppressing some individuals and reaping a harvest of frustration, hatred, and war, we can, with our prayers, help unleash their talents, and lift off limitations imposed by popular thought.

Senator Barack Obama’s victory in becoming the Democratic candidate in this year’s campaign for US President has made history. It’s one example of how longstanding limitations related to race are being lifted. For the first time, many African Americans see a role model whom the nation could elect to its highest office (“Many Blacks Find Joy in Unexpected Breakthrough,” The New York Times, June 5, 2008). On the other hand, some people point to signs that blacks are still the object of hatred among other races, and some have voiced fears for Mr. Obama’s safety.

Spiritual solutions offer help and hope. While the cause of racism may often be identified as prejudice within certain groups, it can be traced back much further, as the ancient wisdom of the Hebrew Scripture points out. There the Bible records an illustration of what might be called the “First Separation.” The serpent who tempted Eve promised her something seemingly good that was separate from God. The wrong choice to eat of the fruit from the tree of good and evil led, according to this account, to humanity’s separation from Paradise, the fratricidal rivalry between Cain and Abel—and every mortal ill that followed.

The Adam-dream presents life as a material round, where rivalry and division are the norm.

These errors of perception present a false history, well described in the second chapter of Genesis, which speaks of God creating Adam out of dust and then—while Adam was in a deep sleep—making Eve, and everything else, from the same material substance. This Adam-dream presents life as a material round, where rivalry and division are the norm.

Throughout history, people have worked hard to overcome separation and inequality through courageous human efforts. But to eliminate racism entirely, we need to eliminate the Adam-dream. Christian Science explains that this is possible because the dream—with all its levels of separation—is forever illusory. It never existed as a reality in the first place. Waking to the truth reveals this in practical ways.

“In the universe of Truth, matter is unknown,” Mary Baker Eddy explained in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures. “Hence the eternal wonder,—that infinite space is peopled with God’s ideas, reflecting Him in countless spiritual forms” (Science and Health, p. 503). These sentences express the true nature of creation—entirely separate from separation. And the world needs individuals to embrace this sense of infinity in order to counter the arguments of limitation and discrimination that often seem more and more aggressive among societies.

But how to obtain even a tiny sense of infinity? A first step is to leave material identity out of the equation. When we do this, and identify ourselves and others spiritually, racism, ethnocentrism, gender discrimination, and other forms of separation begin to fall by the wayside because we are looking at creation through the eyes of Truth—something that is totally transformative.

God values all of His creation.

God values all of His creation. Not one of us is purposeless, random, irrelevant. None of us can threaten another. This spiritual fact applies to everyone, regardless of age, color, body type, gender, ethnic background. As “God’s ideas,” we are spiritual, all on a level—infinite and Love-rich—playing field. We are truly brothers and sisters, and gaining this knowledge is a practical necessity if everyone’s talents and skills are to be set free.

Proving this isn’t always easy. The material view of creation threatens to poison even the best efforts. But Jesus’ ministry lifts up a standard to follow. Perhaps because Samaritans were despised, he chose to make such an individual the hero of his famous parable of the good Samaritan, defining the nature of a true neighbor. He spoke with, and stood up for, women—itself a radical step. He also was willing to operate outside his cultural group, and helped people such as a Syrophoenician woman, whose daughter he cured, and a Roman centurion, whose servant was healed.

In many communities, there may not yet be opportunities to participate in interracial dialogue or to work toward mutual understanding. But each of us can pray to break down the mental walls of separation that arise because of racial, ethnic, and tribal differences. Each of us can defend the safety of our neighbors. Each of us can strive to give up thinking of “them” as “other,” and to see them instead as our brothers and sisters, equally beloved ideas of God.

Prayer works. It heals. It reforms human nature. Prayer restores lost and broken hearts and lives. Still, many people wrestle with and question the motives, reach, and value of prayer—in the face of personal health challenges as well as complex national troubles.

Is praying for your own health and welfare selfish?

Our answers come straight from the Christian Science concept of God and the life He creates. If God were a benign but unknowable father figure, then His aid might be suspect. The God we love and rely on is one universal Father-Mother—Love itself, omnipotent and everywhere present, and the creative Principle of all existence, eternal Spirit, the always-caring and all-good Mind that governs and communicates with all creation.

And the nature of this creation? If men and women were nothing but reason-endowed higher organisms, vulnerable to disease, malfunction, and genetically transmitted flaws, then even God’s help wouldn’t be enough to cope. However, reasoning spiritually from the Genesis 1 account of man, male and female, made “in the image” of God, Christian Science founder Mary Baker Eddy wrote: “The likeness of Spirit cannot be so unlike Spirit …. Man is idea, the image, of Love; he is not physique. He is the compound idea of God, including all right ideas; the generic term for all that reflects God’s image and likeness …” (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 475).

Then, prayer for healing in Christian Science isn’t pleading to a remote God for physical change. It begins with acknowledging the wholeness of God and all He creates. It welcomes the Christ into thought, as God’s message of spiritual wholeness and harmony. It trusts the divine law of wholeness to govern and correct the patient’s thoughts, remove fears, and dissolve feelings of separation from God. As people awaken to life’s spiritual realities, their bodies conform with normalized health. But the aim of Christian healing goes beyond health to the betterment of character. It purifies desires, deepens honesty, and spawns compassion.

How can prayer help those suffering from natural and social disasters?

Prayer impels brotherly love and action. It also can help overturn elements in thinking that engender oppression. The prophet Jeremiah heard God say: “Am I a God at hand, saith the Lord, and not a God afar off? … Do not I fill heaven and earth?” (Jer. 23:23, 24). Even amid devastation, God is there, even for those whose lives have been cut short. A loving “God at hand” did not cause storms or destruction. Divine Life causes life, and causes those who love neighbors near and far to reach out in prayer and with helping hands.

As to what prayer can do about political oppression, Jesus said: “When a strong man armed keepeth his palace, his goods are in peace: but when a stronger than he shall come upon him, and overcome him, he taketh from him all his armour wherein he trusted, and divideth his spoils” (Luke 11:21, 22). Some might identify the “strong man” as a ruler. But Mary Baker Eddy wrote, “Mortal mind is ‘the strong man,’ which must be held in subjection before its influence upon health and morals can be removed. This error conquered, we can despoil ‘the strong man’ of his goods, —namely, of sin and disease” (Science and Health, p. 400).

Mortal mind, the human belief that life and intelligence are confined in matter, fathers all oppressions and fears. It lies at the root of social dysfunction, as surely as it does bodily ailments. Prayer subjects mortal mentality to Christ, the divine Truth of being—and error can’t resist the truth any more than darkness can resist light. Progress can come quickly as thought changes within a body politic: Witness the fall of apartheid in South Africa. And millions were praying for peaceful change.

Through prayer, the light of the Christ begets more light. May our world feel its liberating presence today.

Adapted from the Christian Science Sentinel.

Christian Science starts with peace to heal any dysfunction.

Betty, the word dysfunctional resonates with many people these days, whether they’re talking about a dysfunctional family, about the human body, or about dysfunctional governments. What is the Christian Science approach to treating and healing dysfunction?

Probably the most basic thing I could say would be that we must start from a different premise. Rather than trying to detect what the dysfunction is in order to see through it in an attempt to bring healing and to restore peace, we should start not with the dysfunction, which is temporary, but with the idea of peace, which is permanent. Where did the peace come from? Peace isn’t something that you strive to get or that you have to restore. Peace is there first. When you start with peace, you have the answer. Truth always exposes any error.

What are some basic, Bible-based truths behind peaceful functioning?

I think the Sermon on the Mount says it all—that we are “the light of the world.”

Biblically based, I think the Sermon on the Mount says it all—that we are “the light of the world” (Matt. 5:14). So we start with, What is this light? It’s the enlightenment that comes from knowing that there is one God, a loving Father-Mother God, whom we love with our whole heart and soul and mind. And this one God is, as the Bible says, Spirit, divine Love, intelligence, law. It’s one God, universal. And this means not only one God, but also the only—free from any denominational restrictions. When we can start with the truth—with God as the only Mind, the only intelligence and love—we are expressing that light. Jesus offered all of the Mosaic commandments in two great commands: to love God with your whole heart and soul and mind, and to love your neighbor as yourself. It starts, then, with your relation to God. When that is well established, then you’re ready and equipped to help and love someone else, as you would like to be loved and helped.

So, as we get a better grasp of the nature of the Maker, we’ll see better what God has made and maintained?

Yes! That you are His image and likeness, as the opening chapter of the Bible states. You are His expression. And being God’s expression takes away all sense of repression or depression or suppression, because you have found the way by staying with the allness of one God, universal, impartial. Christian Science is based wholly on the two great commandments of Christ Jesus. It is Biblically based.

What you’re saying is that there’s a spiritual lawfulness to normal function.

When we start by accepting the peace that God has created and given us, the dysfunction just vanishes.

Absolutely. Its basis—even with the function of a material body—is the fact that there is no resistance, friction, divisiveness, or separation from God, no matter what comes into our experience. In Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, Mary Baker Eddy wrote, “God is everywhere, and nothing apart from Him is present or has power” (Science and Health, p. 473). If we’re God’s image and likeness, then we’re not God, but we have all of His qualities. We are Godlike. We have all of the security of divine law, all of God’s reflected intelligence, all of the capacity to love impartially and universally, as God does. Dysfunction, then, is not something to be gotten rid of or healed, but when we start by accepting the peace that God has created and given us, the dysfunction just vanishes. And that’s how healing is accomplished in Christian Science—not by trying to get rid of a broken leg, a painful lump, or a headache …

Or with a person who’s been a headache to you?

Exactly! But rather, starting in our prayer for healing with acknowledging and beholding the man and woman of God’s creating, as spiritual, always whole, functioning in perfect harmony—at peace.

Betty, what you’re saying about this spiritual reality, this peace that exists in God’s universe, seems to fly in the face of a discordant and dysfunctional world that we see around us. How do we get to that state of harmony that you’re talking about?

Well, it sometimes does look as if there’s total confusion—with our economy, with the divorce rate, with what has happened in our families, and so forth. So, how can I sit here and say, “Oh, just start with peace. Everything’s lovely”? It’s not a Pollyanna thing.

It’s a matter of recognizing right in the midst of the malfunction or dysfunction, that God’s work is already done.

Now, of course, there’s lots of beauty out there to be seen, and people are seeing it and finding it. But as far as functioning, working together in a harmonious fashion, that’s another story—whether it’s your body not functioning properly with some acute pain, or whether you’re saying, “But my condition is chronic”—well, it’s not a matter of simply saying everything is all right. It’s a matter of recognizing the possibility of discerning, right in the midst of the malfunction or dysfunction, that God’s work is already done. It has to do with grasping more about God’s law of flawless function. If you can start by praying with the expectation that one God, good, is the source that gives you an answer every time, and that His law is universal and impartial, then you can feel, experience, the effect of living under this benevolent law. Christian Science calls it the law of Christ. We see that the Christ has always been here, as Abraham knew. Certainly Joseph was aware of the Christ, and prophets like Isaiah—they all knew the eternal Christ. It’s always been here, but it was proven, made practical, through the works of Jesus. He gave the command to anyone who would follow him, that he or she would be able to do the works that he did, and even “greater works.” Not that today we’re exceeding what Jesus did, but the challenge now is to recognize that God certainly doesn’t know of the evil, the dysfunction, any more today than He did when Jesus proved the reality of good through healing the sick and brokenhearted. We don’t have to know that two and two is four. It just is. God’s truth and peace just is.

So, as you pray for someone, you’re really listening for what God is declaring true right there at that moment?

Yes, about that person—and not at some future time but at that moment. Truth does not need a time process. It is.

Is there a specific example from your practice that illustrates the kind of healing approach that you’re talking about, for restoring normal function?

Oh so many examples! I’ve been a Christian Science practitioner for 50 years now. In my own case, although I’d been a Christian Scientist all my life, it was during my university years when I really discovered what Christian Science is. This was during World War II, when my mother told me that my brother was dying of spinal meningitis. I went berserk on the telephone. We’d never faced any major sickness in our family. At that time I was living with a Christian Science practitioner.

When I got off the phone, the practitioner looked at me, and she saw that I was really trembling. She suggested that I read a certain passage on page 495 in Science and Health, and it starts out: “When the illusion of sickness or sin tempts you, cling steadfastly to God and His idea. Allow nothing but His likeness to abide in your thought. Let neither fear nor doubt overshadow your clear sense and calm trust, that the recognition of life harmonious—as Life eternally is—can destroy any painful sense of, or belief in, that which Life is not. Let Christian Science, instead of corporeal sense, support your understanding of being, and this understanding will supplant error with Truth, replace mortality with immortality, and silence discord with harmony.” I can say it slowly now, but at that time I said it so rapidly, read it so fast, that it meant nothing to me.

It was four o’clock in the afternoon on a Friday when my mother had called. I kept thinking, I ought to fly out there, but you couldn’t fly anyplace during World War II, and you couldn’t go on trains. So Mother said, “No, we’ll wait; they’ll let us know.” She seemed so calm! She asked me not to telephone again as all was well.

There was a Christian Science wartime minister—as they were called then—who was outside my brother’s room praying for him. Since meningitis was contagious, he was not allowed in to see my brother. So, I just kept reading that one paragraph in Science and Health that my practitioner friend had given me. I kept working with those ideas, even though my fear was just rampant. This went on for the next 24 hours—no sleep, just panic.

My ‘clear sense’ and my ‘calm trust’ were spiritual qualities that belonged to me right at that moment.

About four o’clock on Saturday afternoon, as my thinking quieted down, I began to reason, “Oh, this news about my brother, it’s an illusion that is trying to say, yes, everything there looks really desperate, but are you going to believe it? Or, are you going to start with letting ‘neither fear nor doubt overshadow your clear sense and calm trust’ in God?” And I loved the fact of my “clear sense” (because I’d been anything but clear!), and my “calm trust” (I’d been anything but calm), but those were spiritual qualities that belonged to me right at that moment. And they belong to everyone, in every moment. I needed to see that I could take that as true and go with it.

Then, suddenly, such a sense of peace came over me. The peace was so great that I had no desire or urgency to call my mother. I went to bed, and I didn’t hear anything until the following Tuesday. When she did call, she said, “He’s out of the coma, and everything’s fine.” It was a wonderful healing. Now, it wasn’t my own prayerful work that healed my brother, but it did heal me! Out of this healing, I found that sense of peace that convinced me that if I were ever faced with anything, any illness, I would know what to do.

I’ve heard it said that if you have your vertical relationship in good shape—your relationship with God—then the horizontal relationships will take care of themselves. You’ll be impelled to do the kind of universal loving and compassionate caring for others that are basic to healing through prayer.

That’s so important—and the joy it brings to you. One of the main concerns today is with dysfunctional families. It’s been wisely said that a family can be the place of peace and harmony, but it has to come first from the individual, next from the family, and then harmony can flow outward to the community. That rightly puts the onus on the individual’s role in preventing or healing dysfunction in any form.

What are some of the causes for dysfunctional relationships and how can we pray more effectively to turn them around?

The list is so long, but it starts with confusion, with not knowing what you’re supposed to do or be within a relationship. There’s also the sense of pressure that comes with transitions out of old ways, with traditions changing. Then there’s the feeling of being misunderstood, jealousy, impatience, conflicts of personalities, materialism, self-pity, self-condemnation, broken dreams and disappointments, resistance to change—all of these things would contribute to dysfunction.

How do you as a Christian Scientist deal with these things?

Let me answer by telling you more about that time when I was living with a Christian Science practitioner. I was studying at the University of Chicago, reading all the philosophers—Aristotle, Plato, clear down the list—and I discovered that here I was, some 2,000 years later, discussing the same things, and nobody seemed to have found the answers to the big questions of life. They were apparently still looking for solutions.

One day, after I experienced an instantaneous healing of extreme pain when my practitioner friend just looked at me in prayer, I realized, “Wait a minute … she starts with solutions. She’s not working toward them.” I knew then that my career would be about starting with solutions, through prayer. I wanted to be a healer! It happened earlier than I expected, when I was first married and had children, and began getting calls for help through prayer.

Christian Science starts with the solution—with the wholeness and onlyness of God.

Christian Science starts with the solution, with an entirely different premise—with the wholeness and onlyness of God. Not that there’s good and evil, God and a devil. Certainly, in human existence we’re faced with this appearance of dualism all the time. But the basic truth—that God is All and is good, and cares constantly for all of us, maintains our wholeness—when you start with this as your premise, it becomes your solution. There isn’t another force or influence that can cause you to be disappointed, to be stuck in self-pity, anger, impatience, loss. Those have no place in the goodness God has made; they’re mistaken beliefs about human mortal life that are imposed on us. They don’t belong to us any more than “two plus two equals five” belongs to mathematical truth.

Sometimes people fear getting into a relationship because they’re afraid it will eventually fall apart. What can enable us to feel confident about entering a new relationship or about repairing a dysfunctional one?

The first thing one would have to do, in his or her own heart, is to find out what actually is the basis for a relationship, what makes up a family, a marriage. In that seminal book by Mary Baker Eddy, Science and Health, there’s a whole chapter on marriage. And while I don’t counsel people who come to me as a practitioner, I do urge them to read that chapter, frequently, not just give it a once-over. It’s a magnificent statement written from a Biblical standpoint, and it supports everything Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount. The Sermon on the Mount [see Matthew 5–7] tells all one needs in order to have a good and well-functioning body, marriage, business—a good anything and everything. The basis of good relationships is given all the way through that sermon in the Bible, and what Mrs. Eddy has given in Science and Health is the fulfilling of Jesus’ promise of a Comforter that, as he said, would “bring … to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you” (John 14:26). And what he’s said is the truth of God’s nature, of our relationship with God, and of one individual to another.

If there are religious differences between two people—political differences, differences of any kind—we can have that willingness to listen to the other person and understand where they’re coming from. Everyone has opinions, but we need to remember that an opinion is a belief strong enough to be an impression but not strong enough to be the truth. Building harmonious relationships begins with knowing we all have the same Mind. Mind is such a good synonym for God—the Mind, the one creative, protecting, all-knowing and all-acting intelligence—and when you stay with that as your foundation, and talk together, there’s no reason you can’t see and enjoy “family” as an intact unit, with all the flexibility, diversity, and rich appreciation of each other’s uniqueness that’s natural to us as God’s offspring. It may take work, persistence, humility, and yet more love, but the solution is there to be found!

The release of Ingrid Betancourt and 14 other hostages has focused attention on the complex political activities in Colombia. Ms. Betancourt was kidnapped Feb. 23, 2002, while campaigning for the Colombian presidency. The subsequent winner of that election, Álvaro Uribe, arranged the successful undercover rescue after years of fruitless negotiations.

In recent years there has been much finger-pointing and political posturing regarding hostages. All those involved in this wisely planned, safe, and precisely executed mission deserve congratulations. Instead of seeking the limelight, those involved quietly achieved their objective without bloodshed. As Ms. Betancourt exclaimed, “Thank you God ….”

While friends and family rejoice at the successful return of their loved ones, let’s not forget those hostages still languishing in remote jungle prisons. The Colombian government estimates 700 remain in FARC custody (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia). Other sources say the number may exceed 2,000. While many hostages might be unnamed, let them not be forgotten by prayerful people. All are worthy of rescue and of being returned to their lives and families.

Perhaps those familiar with the power of prayer can consider themselves part of a special-forces team assigned to rescue the remainder through prayer. In the military, Special Forces are carefully trained individuals prepared to function under adverse circumstances. Confident, calm, and single-minded, they perform missions that others might consider impossible.

Praying people are the “special forces” of God. They undertake the humanly impossible and show that all things are possible with God.

Those willing to pray might begin by affirming that God is the governor of both FARC guerrillas and their hostages. The Supreme Being does not distinguish between captor and captive. God recognizes each individual as the worthy, intelligent son or daughter of God. Each one has inherited good qualities from God. Mercy, compassion, hope, faith, courage, and unselfishness characterize all the beloved men and women under God’s command.

We can pray that individuals identify themselves first as children of God rather than as part of a political group. Putting ourselves and others under God’s authority realigns the mental balance of power. God is good, and good is supreme. This spiritual fact can strengthen hope and remove frustration. It is a mental force for good that is felt by captives, even as it rebukes captors.

With God, each individual can achieve each one’s right desires. Opportunities and resources seem limited, but turning to God can open the windows of heaven. Frustration flees before the inspiration of divine Mind.

The Scriptures assure us, “Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty” (II Cor. 3:17). The Spirit of the Lord reaches the remotest jungle. Every individual can feel God, Spirit, directing and sustaining each one as the power of divinity frees humanity. It’s divine power that truly frees men and women, in body and in spirit.

Mary Baker Eddy wrote, “The law of the divine Mind must end human bondage, or mortals will continue unaware of man’s inalienable rights and in subjection to hopeless slavery, because some public teachers permit an ignorance of divine power,—an ignorance that is the foundation of continued bondage and of human suffering.” And she continued, “God made man free …. All men should be free …. This is your divine right” (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 227).

Pride and fear cannot resist the transforming power of faith and prayer. No one is outside God’s care. No one is excluded from the divine plan. No one is useless or unwanted. Each individual is remembered, valuable, and valued. Through prayer we can support the individual’s ability to feel the presence of God, of good, even in the midst of turmoil. God’s message of hope and freedom, coming continuously, will sustain them.

Then, as the special forces of God continue to pray confidently, captives and captors alike can be rescued from this weary conflict.

Tom and Judy were playing at a friend’s house on the next block over from their house. Their older brother, Paul, was playing nearby when a bad storm came up really fast. The air made everything around them look green, and the wind was blowing really hard. Paul went to Tom and Judy and said, “We need to get home fast!” Paul told them to take the long way home, which was about three times farther. That didn’t make sense to Judy at all. Then she looked up and saw the black sky that was moving toward them. Paul said they should run away from it, so they did. One of Judy’s shoes fell off. As she stopped to pick it up, Paul told her to keep going and not to look back.

They ran very fast. Paul could have run faster than Tom and Judy, but he stayed behind them all the way home, encouraging them to keep going. Two trees fell behind them just after they’d passed by. Branches dropped around them, and the wind was hard against Judy’s face. They got home safely. And Judy was pleased when Paul handed her the shoe she had lost.

The news reported that the storm was actually the tail of a tornado. They were all glad to learn that no one in the area was hurt and that no homes were destroyed.

Judy remembers that she had been afraid at first, but soon after they started to run, she wasn’t scared any more. She had been learning about God in a Christian Science Sunday School, and she knew the peace she felt inside was because she was sure God could keep them safe. And He did.

That helped Judy several years later when her little brother, David, woke her in the middle of the night. They’d heard weather reports that hurricane winds were soon to hit along the East Coast and that lots of damage and trouble would result. The storm was not expected to come near them, but David was worried about the other people. He asked Judy how he could pray to help the people on the East Coast. Judy told him about her earlier experience, and together, they came up with these three things to pray about:

1. The Bible says, “God is love” (I John 4:16). Because God is Love, David and Judy knew they could trust Him to protect everyone. The power of Love is greater than the storm and the fear of the storm.

When Judy was running from the storm years earlier, Paul had told her to keep going and not look back. That’s the way it is in the face of scary things—weather and otherwise. Looking to Love takes away the fear just as the Bible says, “Perfect love casteth out fear” (I John 4:18).

2. Even when things look really bad, God is always there to help. They laughed when they thought, “God doesn’t go to sleep or go on vacation. He’s not too busy helping someone else when we need help. No one has to wait in a line for God’s help until it’s their turn.”

3. God will help everyone. God is our Father, as explained in the Lord’s Prayer. Because God is “our” Father, the power of Love is always available to everyone, no matter where they are or who they are, what they’re doing or what they did before.

David and Judy didn’t know anyone on the East Coast. But they were sure that because God is everywhere, their prayers would help even people they didn’t know and who didn’t even know they were praying. David remembered a line from a poem by the Discoverer of Christian Science, Mary Baker Eddy: “Keep Thou my child on upward wing tonight” (Poems, p. 4). With that idea, they went back to bed and they both slept well.

The next morning, David woke early and ran to get the newspaper. The front-page story was about the storm that never arrived. Just before hitting the coast, it had changed direction and unexpectedly went out to sea. They knew that sometimes that happens to storms, but they were glad they’d prayed and felt deep inside that their prayers and the prayers of many others had helped make a difference.

Whoever speaks of timely and untimely deaths inadvertently suggests that there are circumstances in which death can be the right thing at the right time. Yet the Bible suggests something radically different from that, namely that death is an enemy to be destroyed through spiritual progress (see I Cor. 15:26).

Nevertheless, there are deaths that feel particularly unjust—such as the loss of a teenager to violence. Britain, especially London, has recently experienced an upsurge of such murders, disproportionately among black teenagers. Some have been victims of targeted crimes, some victims of a volatile reaction to a look or word considered “disrespectful,” and some victims of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, crossing into a neighboring gang’s “turf,” even if the reason for being there was to go from A to B, with B happening to be in that “wrong” postal code.

What can be done? The new mayor of London and his specially appointed deputy mayor are keenly looking into short-term policing needs and longer-term solutions involving the voluntary sector that works with youths. Local newspapers are highlighting the issue. And people of many faiths are praying about the situation.

In the case of teen deaths, prayer might seem to come out of the yearning heart as a plea for God to do something to change the tragic circumstances. Prayer is more powerful when it affirms the inevitable action of the infinite intelligence that is God and seeks to behold and implement inspired ideas from the divine Mind that can bring human action into line with the divine.

What is the divine action relevant to teenagers in London and around the world today? One aspect of this must be the always effective antidote to “the last enemy,” death—namely the self-revealing knowledge and proof of “life everlasting” as the Bible describes the divine Life, God.

This universally assertive knowledge of everlasting life as the true and eternal state of everyone—including teens! —is the Christ that Jesus made plain in his own life. The spiritual standpoint of individual and universal being, of which Jesus was so conscious, was proved practical when he passed unseen through a mob intent on killing him.

This consciousness of God’s ever-presence and each individual’s true place within the protection of the divine presence is available to all.

The gift of God to one and all is immortality, not mortality—not only for oneself and one’s loved ones, but for all. The founder of the Monitor, Mary Baker Eddy, once wrote: “Good thoughts are an impervious armor; clad therewith you are completely shielded from the attacks of error of every sort. And not only yourselves are safe, but all whom your thoughts rest upon are thereby benefited” (The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, p. 210).

To the degree that all people accept a better sense of life than the material view that includes randomness, insecurity, and fatalism (good or bad), and let loving thoughts—holding to the true view of life as spiritual and eternal—“rest upon” the teenagers coping with life in the city, more rapid progress out of teen killings will become possible.

People often think it takes lots of faith to heal through prayer. Apparently the first Christian apostles even thought so. When they implored Jesus, “Increase our faith,” he told them that with faith as small as a tiny seed they could command a tree to uproot itself and jump into the sea, and it would do it (see Luke 17:5, 6). With this deft response, Jesus completely dismissed the notion that their faith would have to come in large quantities. He directed their thought away from the amount of faith they possessed to the power that lay behind it.

The power of prayer, Jesus taught, is not so much in the faith of the one who prays, but in what one has faith in. He placed absolute faith in God, omnipotent Truth, as the healing power, and so does Christian Science. Jesus made clear that divine Truth can be known, understood, so that one’s faith is not blind, but enlightened—and that this understanding comes through faithfully following his teachings. He said, “If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed; and ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free” (John 8:31, 32).

Note that Jesus said “the truth shall make you free,” not that one’s knowing of the truth makes one free.

I find it very freeing to think in terms of being faithful, rather than struggling for more faith. This kind of focus directs my attention to seeking to understand God as Truth, and then to be faithful to what I am learning. Each one of us has the spiritual sense, the God-given capacity, to perceive and understand the divine Science of Truth that lay behind Jesus’ healing power.

Being faithful to what we are learning of Truth brings Truth’s omnipotent healing power into our present experience today.

Certainly no one can ever say they have reached the point where they know divine Truth so completely that they have no more to learn. Gaining a true understanding of God is a lifetime learning activity. Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer of the Science of Christ, Truth, made this point when she said, “A grain of Christian Science does wonders for mortals, so omnipotent is Truth, but more of Christian Science must be gained in order to continue in well doing” (Science and Health, p. 449). The beautiful thing is, though, that being faithful to what we are learning of Truth brings Truth’s omnipotent healing power into our present experience today. And that makes the necessary self-discipline well worth the effort.

For example, I’ve been a student of Christian Science for over 50 years. Each of the many healings I have experienced has come in the same way—by my learning what’s true of God, and being faithful to Truth by acknowledging the consequent untruth of some discord. That’s where the discipline comes in.

It’s very easy to unquestioningly accept the plethora of diseases and disturbing scenes before us as real and true, especially those that hit home in our own lives. To be faithful to God, and thus to bring healing to these situations, we need to be keenly aware of God as Truth. I’ve found no better way to do this than through an openhearted daily study of Christian Science, accompanied by moments of prayerful communion with God.

Let me share a few of the things the textbooks of Christian Science, the Bible and Science and Health, teach me about God as Truth.

Truth heals by liberating the human mind from ignorantly believing in what is untrue of God and His creation.

God is Truth because God is the only Cause, the only Creator. Immortal Truth is the Principle, Mind, Soul, Spirit, and Life of all God creates. Truth is unchanging, divine Love, permitting no error—no limitation, corruption, disease—neither in itself or in its creation. By reason of its all-presence and all-power, Truth precludes the existence of error; therefore, whatever is unlike God is untrue, unreal, nothing more than an illusion of the human mind. Truth heals by liberating the human mind from ignorantly believing in what is untrue of God and His creation.

Now that’s a lot to take in, for sure. That’s why it’s so important to give God our full attention in our moments of study and prayer—and to keep whatever we know to be true of God before our thought during the day. We’re so used to judging what’s real and what’s unreal through what our eyes and ears tell us, whereas divine Truth is understood through spiritual sense. Faithful attention to living the spiritual qualities put forth in Jesus’ teachings—the Beatitudes (see Matt. 5:3–12), as one example—spiritualize the quality of our thinking. This sharpens our spiritual sense and enables us to reason clearly that Truth is indeed the only reality despite what the five senses tell us.

It’s not how much you know of God but how faithful you are to what you do know that brings the healing power of God into your experience. A recent healing of mine illustrates this point. One morning, my alarm rang. I started to move my leg to the side of the bed. My leg was stiff and sore. I went to move my arm. Same thing. Every bit of me was stiff and sore. I thought, What! Did I turn into an old lady overnight? I laughed at that a little. Then I started to pray.

As I proceeded rather slowly to get out of bed and get ready for the day, I turned my thoughts to God as the only Cause. I saw how necessary it was for me to love God thoroughly, and not to be made to believe anything that is not true about Him. So whenever a suggestion of another cause besides God came to my thought, such as time, or age, or overexertion, I would mentally reason that since God is the only Cause, the stiffness didn’t have any cause at all.

I limbered up as the day went on, but the next morning it was the same story, and the same prayer. Then after I had dressed and was walking out of my bedroom, I suddenly stood still for a moment. I thought, Well, if this stiffness doesn’t have a cause, then it just plain isn’t! And it wasn’t! Every hint of stiffness and soreness was gone just like that—and never returned. Divine Truth liberated my thought and healed me.

What I really needed was less faith in error.

Did this healing come because I suddenly had a greater quantity of faith in Truth than I had had a moment earlier? No. It came because my faith in Truth as the only Cause overtook my mistaken faith in material causes and destroyed it. As Science and Health states, “When we come to have more faith in the truth of being than we have in error … then no material suppositions can prevent us from healing the sick and destroying error” (Science and Health, p. 368). What I really needed was less faith in error.

It’s not hard to have faith in what you know to be true, unless you can be made to believe a lie. So bring your openhearted, receptive thought to a daily study of Christian Science and engage in moments of precious communion with God. Ponder Truth. Love it. Explore the diversity of beautiful spiritual qualities that make up God’s being and that pervade man’s (everyone’s) true being as His spiritual reflection. Then, be faithful to Truth. Don’t let the spiritual ignorance floating around in the general atmosphere of human thought talk you into believing what you know is not true.

No matter how small you think your faith in Truth is, be faithful to it, and you will experience Truth’s liberating, healing power.

Contributing Editor Barbara Vining is a Christian Science practitioner and teacher. She lives in Toledo, Ohio.

Jeffrey Hildner talks with physicist Michael Antal

Jeffrey Hildner: The convergence of waning global oil production and what many see as waxing global warming has intensified the scientific community’s focus on renewable energy research here in the opening chapter of the 21st century. But you’ve focused on renewable energy for over 35 years now. Why did you get interested in renewable energy so early?

Michael Antal: There are two answers to that. The first answer revolves around issues of physics, and the second answer revolves around issues of metaphysics.

As to the physics side of the equation, my interest goes back to my time at Dartmouth, where there’s a tradition of interest in global energy. Dartmouth was a magnet for people who were concerned about the environment and the future of energy. And then in 1973–74 the energy crisis surfaced, echoing the predictions of limits to growth. I was at Los Alamos at that point, and the scientists at Los Alamos had a big interest in energy and different ways of satisfying our country’s energy needs. I was encouraged to devote some of my time to the renewable energy area even though I was in a group concerned with thermonuclear weapons physics.

When you say “predictions of limits to growth,” what do you mean? Could you unpack that?

Well, the term limits to growth goes back to the big interest in renewable energy that emerged from research at MIT, specifically from Donella Meadows, a pioneer in environmental science who later taught at Dartmouth. In 1972, when I was a graduate student at Harvard, Meadows published Limits to Growth, a classic book modeling the impact of a rapidly growing world population and finite resources. She and her husband, who collaborated on the book, used very sophisticated numerical models to predict the future. And 36 years ago they predicted that around the turn of the century, right now, there were going to be real problems, difficult times.

And the second answer as to why you got interested in renewable energy so early—the metaphysical factor in the equation?

I don’t accept the general concept of limits to growth.

As a metaphysicist, I don’t accept the general concept of limits to growth, even though as a physicist I know that these limits with respect to fossil fuels are very real. It seems to me that innovation and creativity—even radical scientific breakthroughs—will be required to circumvent those limits.

You know there’s this Adam-and-Eve curse that we have on us that says we must till the ground from whence we are taken. At least that’s the belief. And one aspect of tilling the ground is mining the earth for coal and oil and natural gas, so I see this process as part of the curse. Another aspect of the curse is this sense of limitation that comes from it. In Science and Health, Mary Baker Eddy defined serpent as “the first lie of limitation” (p. 594). So the sense of limitation has been with humanity from the get-go.

Look also at Mrs. Eddy’s line in her definition of Eve: “that which does not last forever” (Science and Health, p. 585). So again you get this sense of limitation associated with a false, Adam-and-Eve account of creation. You get this sense of material things ending, which is what is approaching as far as our fossil fuel resources are concerned. That which does not last forever. They are running out. We will live to see it.

I also like Mrs. Eddy’s definition of Euphrates. It’s a long definition, but toward the middle of it there’s this: “a state of mortal thought, the only error of which is limitation” (Science and Health, p. 585).

Limitation is the very first error that appears in mortal consciousness.

So this sense of limitation is the very first error that appears in mortal consciousness. It’s the root error that is the source of all the other errors. And to me, it seems like events are forcing us to escape from this Adam curse. I’ve always seen my research into energy sources, which take the lid off this limitation, as potentially contributing to this escape.

Mrs. Eddy has a wonderful quote, “Spirit acts through the Science of Mind, never causing man to till the ground, but making him superior to the soil. Knowledge of this lifts man above the sod, above earth and its environments, to conscious spiritual harmony and eternal being” (Science and Health, pp. 520–521). Christian Science naturally causes us, I think, to look elsewhere than the soil for our resources and our well-being.

It sounds to me that maybe you see yourself as a kind of servant-scientist. How has your study of Christian Science helped you in your research and your quest for innovation and breakthroughs that will help the world?

Well first, I think divine Mind has shaped my career and guided me to wonderful opportunities to fulfill my sense of purpose of, as you say, being a servant-scientist. Take my being here in Hawaii. It turns out that Hawaii is an excellent place to conduct my research because Hawaii has no fossil fuel resources. It’s entirely dependent on imports of fuel, so the mentality in Hawaii is to naturally look for sustainability and independence, because the moment there’s any global energy problem, Hawaii is the first to feel it. Also, global warming is causing the sea level to rise. The rise has been measured, and there are predictions about how much rise will occur. This is a great concern to the islands in the Pacific because some islands that are inhabited will completely disappear. Others will lose shoreline. In our case, 50 years from now Waikiki will be quite different than it is today. We will lose a lot of our shoreline. So this is another reason that in Hawaii there’s an outlook similar to Europe’s.

Christian Science has helped me break through various limitations along the way.

Second, Christian Science has helped me break through various limitations along the way. For example, my work is extremely interdisciplinary. It not only involves many engineering and science fields but also involves economics, because our energy research needs to be competitive in the marketplace. Christian Science has helped me cut through resistance among university departments to their having faculty do this kind of work, and has helped me push past limitations that the ordinary educational establishment might impose.

And, of course, my whole area of research, Flash Carbonization, involves breaking through limitations, for the very reason that the research is still considered radical.

What is the Flash Carbonization process?

I have to give you a bit of a primer on fossil fuels to answer that question. The world uses three types of fuels: solid, liquid, gaseous. The big three are coal, oil (gasoline), and natural gas.

For each of these fossil fuels there is a renewable equivalent. The renewable equivalent of natural gas is hydrogen. The renewable equivalent of gasoline is ethanol and biodiesel. The renewable equivalent of coal is charcoal. These fuels are viewed as renewable because they’re obtained from a renewable biomass, such as agricultural crops or trees.

My research focuses on charcoal, the renewable energy substitute for coal. Now coal is basically carbon, and charcoal is a very pure form of carbon. Charcoal has no mercury. It has no sulfur. It’s virtually a pure carbon. So charcoal is very environmentally friendly.

We use charcoal for barbecue, and for us it seems cute. It seems fun. We can’t imagine it being an important fuel, but we appreciate its qualities because we enjoy cooking over it. Why do we cook over it? It’s clean. It’s clean for cooking, and it imparts a special flavor. Now it turns out that charcoal is used for cooking by more people in the world than any other fuel. And in Hawaii, all of the water we drink is treated using activated charcoal.

Until recently, the viewpoint about charcoal has been that it’s inefficient and slow to produce. So nobody ever took charcoal seriously. Basically, in my work we learned how to make charcoal very efficiently and very quickly. We can make charcoal much more efficiently and quickly than you can make ethanol from wood or grain. So our breakthrough was learning how to make charcoal efficiently and quickly.

How has Christian Science helped sustain your maverick research?

Christian Science has helped me trust that my research is valid and to expect that answers to renewable energy might well come in unexpected forms.

You know when Moses supplied the manna to the Israelites on their Exodus from Egypt, the people were starving [see Ex. 16:2–15]. Did they expect to receive manna as their food when they prayed? In other words, when they looked at the manna, did they know immediately that this was bread they could eat? As I recall, they didn’t know what it was; it wasn’t familiar to them. It came in a form they didn’t expect, and at first they doubted what it was. But they discovered that this manna was nutritious, and they were able to eat it. And it sustained them.

One needs to have a flexible thought, an open thought, an expectant thought.

All I’m getting at is that we’ve been enculturated to expect that our fuel will be a liquid or a gas. So if someone comes forward and says, “No, the fuel that will be the best for you is solid charcoal,” people might respond, “That makes no sense” just as the Israelites said about the manna, “We don’t know what this is. It doesn’t make sense.” So one needs to have a flexible thought, an open thought, an expectant thought—a thought that doesn’t outline how our supply will come.

Christian Science has also helped me to make hard choices. The hardest choice that I had to make was around the year 2000. My laboratory had published the highest yields of hydrogen from biomass ever obtained in the literature. And with Professor Lee Lynd at Dartmouth College, we published the highest yields of ethanol ever obtained in the literature. We also had published the highest yields of charcoal ever obtained in the literature. So at that point I could have given emphasis to any one of these areas. But I chose this charcoal route, the path less traveled. And I think it was the right choice.

How would you define renewable energy as seen through the lens of Christian Science?

Mary Baker Eddy wrote about the vitality and the vigor of Mind, echoing the Bible passage, “They that wait upon the Lord [Mind] shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint” (Isa. 40:31). Mind doesn’t feel any sense of exhaustion, any sense of depletion, any sense of limitation. And I think the desire of the renewable energy community is to somehow get closer to that in our immediate experience.

Jeffrey Hildner is a senior writer for the Journal and creative director of the Journal and Christian Science Sentinel.

Is childbirth solely a physical event requiring a medical environment? In the United States today, over 99 percent of all births occur in a hospital setting; 97.5 percent in the United Kingdom. Consequently, the dominant view—at least in those countries—leans heavily toward the physical, medical, technological, and human emotion aspects of birth.

But there’s more to bringing a child into the world. There’s a spiritual dimension to birth that, like the spiritual realities of life itself, needs to be more widely understood—for humanity’s health and welfare.

Childbirth transitioned from an event attended by midwives and family to a scenario that was increasingly viewed as a medical condition.

In the late 19th century, childbirth had transitioned from an event attended by midwives and family to a scenario that was increasingly viewed as a medical condition requiring the attendance of a physician. At this same time, Mary Baker Eddy had discovered Christian Science, and was healing and teaching others with this spiritualized view of existence. In fact, she recorded a time in the early stages of her discovery when she visited a woman who was suffering with complications from a surgical operation following the birth of her last child. This woman was never expected to have another child, and her doctors predicted she would soon die. Mrs. Eddy requested to visit her, and after she prayed by her bedside for 15 minutes, the woman was not only immediately well, but later delivered a healthy 12-pound baby, writing to Mrs. Eddy, “I never before suffered so little in childbirth” (Retrospection and Introspection, p. 40).

Since the vast majority of women today give birth in hospitals, often with technological interventions, there’s surprisingly little evidence of what a non-medicalized birth looks like. Despite the fact that most women are healthy and should be able to expect a normal childbirth—whether in a hospital setting or at home with the attendance of a midwife or other birthing professional—recent statistics indicate that one in three mothers now give birth by Caesarean section, a record level for the United States.

Providing a platform for spiritualizing the concept of birth is vital.

Sometimes the law requires that a mother have a doctor in attendance at the birth, and of course it’s important to be law-abiding. And a mother’s instinct is to protect the well-being of her child, never putting it in jeopardy. But how a mother gives birth isn’t really the issue. And it’s certainly not our intent or role to advise on such an important decision. But providing a platform for spiritualizing the concept of birth is vital, and the benefits of this view are available to all.

Herself a mother, Mrs. Eddy clearly saw the importance of elevating thought regarding childbirth. She included a very specific paragraph in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures on “scientific obstetrics,” in the chapter “Teaching Christian Science.” There she wrote, “Teacher and student should also be familiar with the obstetrics taught by this Science.” And she emphasized, “To attend properly the birth of the new child, or divine idea, you should so detach mortal thought from its material conceptions, that the birth will be natural and safe” (Science and Health , p. 463).

Let’s examine some of the common fears that would draw thought toward a strictly material concept of birth, and consider how to address them prayerfully.

Pregnancy and childbirth are physical events, involving material growth and development. When it is clearly understood that all being—the whole of creation—has its source in God, the one and only Creator, then material growth and physicality lose their predominance in thought. Expectant parents can confidently care for their child from the very first, by cherishing and acknowledging the child’s spiritual individuality and origin. They can also glimpse the fact that they and the child each share the same divine Parent, and that this relationship frees them from a false sense of responsibility or from fear of the unknown. As God’s ideas, we reflect His creative power, but we are not personal creators.

The notion that childbirth is a painful event suggests a separation from divine Love.

Childbirth is painful and unpredictable. A curse that traces back to the allegory of Adam and Eve shouldn’t continue to haunt women. This verse from Isaiah provides comfort and reassurance: “Shall I bring to the birth, and not cause to bring forth? saith the Lord: shall I cause to bring forth, and shut the womb? saith thy God” (Isa. 66:9). The notion that childbirth is a painful event suggests a separation from divine Love, which knows no pain for its creation. Divine Love rejoices in the constant and harmonious appearing of each idea and would never promote an environment of discomfort.

Childbearing involves two beings, mother and child, who could potentially harm or endanger one another. In the same paragraph on scientific obstetrics, Mrs. Eddy wrote, “Though gathering new energy, this idea cannot injure its useful surroundings in the travail of spiritual birth.” Mother and child can witness together how divine Life completely sustains and provides for its ideas. There can be no added strain, no depletion of life. And with the expression of God’s creative power comes a natural harmony and order.

The best counsel anyone can hope for—as an expectant parent or eager grandparent—rests in the direct relationship to the Creator that all individuals have to nourish and learn from. We are, in St. Paul’s memorable words, “all the children of God” (Gal. 3:26).

My decision was expected within 24 hours. I had just been offered the position of regional president of the commercial real estate management company I worked for. While flattered by the offer, I also felt overwhelmed—and a bit scared.

This job offer came to me after the two previous presidents had left the company, each after less than a year. I had worked as a senior manager for both of these people, but as president I would be responsible for overseeing a staff of 25 (most of whom were older and more experienced than I), and I would be managing two commercial buildings with over 200 tenants—companies ranging from small businesses to international corporations. Ultimately, it would be my responsibility to keep everyone happy.

We always have ‘the room’ or the time we need to see what God’s will includes.

I had a big decision to make. I’ve always trusted my prayers, but because the offer weighed heavily on me, I called a Christian Science practitioner for support. I was grateful that he immediately addressed my fears by pointing out that in reality I had, as the phrase from a favorite hymn says, “radiant room” in which to make this decision (see Christian Science Hymnal, No. 298). The practitioner wasn’t actually suggesting I ignore the 24-hour deadline, but his point was that God’s will for us is good and that we always have “the room” or the time we need to see what God’s will includes. That spiritual truth gave me instant relief.

Then a friend mentioned that this new job would be an opportunity for me to move beyond my comfort level. When she said that, it reminded me of what the Bible says about comfort, specifically the Comforter. For example, Jesus said, “But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you” (John 14:26). I realized that the Comforter is here today, comforting me, giving me the courage and strength to take whatever progressive step I needed.

The next day I accepted the job. I set my goal to make it past the one-year mark. The company had a lot of problems. In one building, the tenants were very unhappy and causing unrest. The whole staff had low morale and were frustrated, and many were not supportive of my new role. They made subtle and not-so-subtle attempts to undermine my efforts.

It soon became clear that it was critical to start out on the right foot. I felt that my job description included not only the task of running the company but, more importantly to me, I knew that before I did anything else, I had to put God first. The thought came to me to lay the foundation for this new role by understanding that God is Principle, and to pray for myself and for my job performance from that standpoint. I began by recognizing that divine Principle was the motivating and supporting force in my company and with everyone associated with it. God was both governor and manager, the ultimate authority in every aspect of life.

I could rely on Principle for the intelligence to create wise policies and then let Principle enforce these ideas through its compassionate law.

I also went back to my notes from Christian Science class instruction and looked up the many references to divine Principle. I considered two ways Principle was operating in relation to my company: First, I considered what God was doing as Principle, and second, what God’s image—including me and everyone—was doing as the reflection of Principle. Since Principle is the only cause, then it is constantly originating and creating and is the source of every thought and action. I then saw that I could rely on Principle for the intelligence to create wise policies and then let Principle enforce these ideas through its compassionate law. I could let Principle coordinate every plan, focus every thought, maintain order in every meeting, and thereby best direct the course of the company. Principle mentors us and gently corrects us, never allowing harsh or unfair measures. Principle unites everyone in a common cause and links us to the right resources. Principle correlates, relating one idea to another in perfect harmony. Principle stabilizes, providing a sure foundation for every aspect of our lives.

As I prayed with these ideas, it became obvious to me that divine Principle, not I, was doing all the work. My only job was to be a witness to this holy fact. These and many more ideas helped me as I began new tasks to restructure the company, such as writing an employee handbook. I had never done such a thing before, but found all of the resources I needed to do it successfully.

While supervising my peers, I attended meetings where discussions went on concerning areas of the company I’d had little to do with before, such as accounting and finance. In one meeting, an attendee carelessly passed out the accounting reports as though he were dealing a stack of cards. After quickly presenting the oral reports, almost everyone left the room before I could gather my wits to ask a question. Although I was tempted to commiserate with a couple of my staff who were “on my side,” I thought about what I could do to better manage all of my co-workers.

All of us, as the reflection of Principle, had unity of purpose and a desire to work together in harmony for a common purpose.

Again, I went back to divine Principle. I affirmed to myself that Principle equalizes, providing balance and equity in relationships, giving all people and positions equal importance and mutual respect. I saw that all of us, as the reflection of Principle, had unity of purpose and a desire to work together in harmony for a common purpose. I knew that innately we desired cooperation rather than competition and would naturally want to follow the highest standards of ethics. I realized that we didn’t have to be reduced to political wrangling, pitting those in support of me against those who weren’t supportive. I affirmed that as the individual ideas of divine Principle, we all expressed freedom from favoritism. And because we all shared equally in our divine Parent’s love and care, we could rise to see only the best—the expression of the Christ—in everyone. We could expect to be loyal to each other, since, as the reflection of Principle, we were all trusting, humble, and dignified.

Gradually my co-workers’ cynicism of my role faded, and simultaneously my confidence grew. I was no longer hesitant to ask questions when I needed clarification, and my co-workers became eager to explain what I didn’t understand. Good humor and a more relaxed tone became the norm in our office. And exactly one year after I accepted the job, I received a lovely gift of recognition at the Christmas party. I was thrilled to pass the one-year mark!

During what turned out to be 16 years in this job, I returned to the study of Principle many times. As a result, I witnessed many wonderful examples of growth and harmony, including national recognition of one of our buildings for its groundbreaking marketing programs, and achievement of the real estate industry’s highest recognition of success: full building occupancy and significantly increased value.

Although a lot of advice on how to be a successful leader and manager fills the business section of bookstores, what led to my successful and rewarding career were the lessons that came from prayer and from leaning unreservedly on divine Principle.

Kelly Michaels lives in Bellevue, Washington.

Prayer works. It heals. It reforms human nature. And prayer restores lost and broken hearts and lives. Over many decades the Christian Science magazines have published undeniable evidence of prayer’s transforming effects. Still, we recognize that many people wrestle with and question the motives, reach, and value of prayer—in the face of personal health challenges as well as complex national troubles such as those facing post-cyclone Myanmar.

Is praying for your own health and welfare selfish?

What may seem a strange question to readers whose families have successfully relied on prayer-based healthcare for many years, even for generations, actually comes up fairly often in conversations with fellow Christians. They might ask, “Isn’t praying for healing the same as asking God for special favors? Aren’t you, in fact, testing God when you pray for healing?”

Our answers come straight from the Christian Science concept of God and the life He creates.

The God we love and rely on is one universal Father-Mother.

If God were a benign but essentially unknowable father figure—sometimes present and caring, sometimes not—then God’s aid might be suspect at best. The God we love and rely on is one universal Father-Mother. She is Love itself, omnipotent and everywhere present. He is the creative Principle of all existence, eternal Spirit, the always-caring and all-good divine Mind that actively governs and communicates with all creation.

And the nature of this creation? If men and women were nothing but reason-endowed higher organisms, vulnerable to disease, malfunction, and genetically transmitted flaws, then even God’s help wouldn’t be enough to cope. However, reasoning spiritually from the Genesis 1 account of man, male and female, made “in the image” of God, Christian Science founder Mary Baker Eddy wrote: “The likeness of Spirit cannot be so unlike Spirit…. Man is idea, the image, of Love; he is not physique. He is the compound idea of God, including all right ideas; the generic term for all that reflects God’s image and likeness; ….” (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 475).

Prayer in Christian Science isn’t pleading to a remote God to change physical conditions.

Then, prayer for healing in Christian Science isn’t pleading to a remote God for a change in physical conditions. It begins with acknowledging the invariable wholeness of God and all He creates. It welcomes the Christ into thought, as God’s message of spiritual wholeness and harmony. It trusts the divine law of wholeness to govern and correct the patient’s thoughts, remove fears, and dissolve feelings of separation from God. As people awaken to life’s spiritual realities, their bodies conform with normalized health.

But the aim of Christian healing goes far beyond personal health and well-being, to the betterment of human character. It purifies desires, deepens honesty, and spawns compassionate concern for others. The Christian healer naturally wants everyone, everywhere, to enjoy the kingdom-of-God reality now, and not just in some hoped-for afterlife.

How can prayer help those suffering from natural and social disasters, such as the people of southwestern China and Myanmar?

Let’s look briefly at two ways. Prayer impels brotherly-sisterly love and humanitarian action. It also can help overturn elements in human thinking that engender oppression or exploitation.

The prophet Jeremiah heard God say: “Am I a God at hand, saith the Lord, and not a God afar off? … Do not I fill heaven and earth?” (Jer. 23:23, 24). Even in the face of awful devastation, God is there. Life everlasting is there, and yes, this includes those thousands whose human lives have been cut short. A loving “God at hand” did not cause the storm or its destruction. Divine Life causes only life, and causes those who love neighbors near and far to reach out in prayer and with helping hands.

As to what prayer can do about political oppression, consider something Jesus said: “When a strong man armed keepeth his palace, his goods are in peace: but when a stronger than he shall come upon him, and overcome him, he taketh from him all his armour wherein he trusted, and divideth his spoils” (Luke 11:21, 22).

A literal reading of Jesus’ words might identify the “strong man” with personal rulers, with people desperately attempting to hold on to power at a country’s expense. But the higher meaning of Jesus’ teachings point in a quite different direction: “Mortal mind,” Mary Baker Eddy wrote, “is ‘the strong man,’ which must be held in subjection before its influence upon health and morals can be removed. This error conquered, we can despoil ‘the strong man’ of his goods,—namely, of sin and disease” (Science and Health, p. 400).

Prayer subjects mortal mentality to the Christ.

Mortal mind, the human belief that life and intelligence are confined in matter, fathers all oppressions and fears. It lies at the root of social dysfunction, as surely as it does bodily ailments. Prayer subjects mortal mentality to the Christ, to the divine Truth of being—and error can’t resist the truth any more than darkness can resist light. Progress can come quickly as thought changes within a body politic: Witness the former Czechoslovakia’s 1989 “velvet revo