Healed Simply By Reading a Book?
What heals? The world is crying out for healing of troubles of every kind.
If you are troubled, physically or mentally, where do you turn? There are certainly plenty of approaches to solving problems.
Look in the Bible at how Christ Jesus healed all sorts of difficulties, physical and mental, liberating multitudes from disease and discord, even raising the dead. He claimed no special ability in this regard, but said, "He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also" (John 14:12) and "Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free" (John 8:32).
Liberated by truth - could it really be that simple? Where can we find the truth? How can we know the truth?
Again, Jesus said, "I am the way, the truth, and the life" (John 14:6). Here Jesus was referring to himself as the Son of God, divine Truth itself. And Jesus showed we are each the child of God. In order to know the truth, we need to understand our God and our nature as God's image. This is spiritual understanding, which lifts thought to a higher sense of existence, liberates, and heals.
Spiritual understanding runs through the Bible like a thread of light, but it can often seem obscured to one who sees physical matter as the primary substance of existence. Matter is opposed to God, who is Spirit. The Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures," was written by Mary Baker Eddy, who saw in Jesus' teaching and healing an infinite power that is spiritual, of God. Since this book was first published, its message has healed any reader who has seen something of the truth of God and of our relation to Him. Often people have seen existence in an entirely new light as they studied this book together with the Bible. That truth has freed them, as Jesus promised. They have ever after looked at the Bible in a new way. While some readers have been directed to ask someone to pray for them, many have found the healing they were looking for just by reading Science and Health. The last hundred pages tell of many such healings, including ones of tuberculosis, heart disease, cancer, rheumatism, cataract, and deafness.
I was healed simply by reading Science and Health and learning of our spiritual identity in God. After several miscarriages, I was desperate, feeling locked into a pattern, unable to have a baby. Science and Health had been on our bookshelf - though it had never interested me. Now I picked it out, wondering if it could help me. I read it for four days, just about nonstop. The terrible pains I had been having after the most recent miscarriage ceased almost immediately.
That gave me hope. I decided to study the Bible and Science and Health regularly. Some months later, after I had experienced other healings (of a sprained ankle, a bee sting, a severe burn, and migraine headaches), the answer to my desperate need to heal the miscarriages became apparent, in a sentence that stood out to me: "We must realize the ability of mental might to offset human misconceptions and to replace them with the life which is spiritual, not material" (Science and Health, Pg. 428).
Pondering this, and realizing that "mental might" meant the power of God that comes through spiritual understanding, I suddenly saw something: no child of God is ever lost to his or her creator. All are always known to God as His spiritual ideas, and all life is actually spiritual, not material. God is Life, and we are Life's reflection. A misconception as to the very nature of life was offset in my thinking. This healed my grief. It healed my fear. And it healed me of having miscarriages. I now have three grown sons. I've also had many other healings since that time, and have been able to bring healing to others.
You can be healed by practicing Christian Science, as taught in Science and Health. Since it is Truth, God, that heals, it is only some misconception of Him that is at the root of any human problem. Knowing the truth - knowing God - makes free. It heals.
