Christian Science
(This is an excerpt from a University Of Metaphysical Sciences course at www.umsonline.org,
please feel free to visit the school website)
As the only Christian religion whose mission, tenets and basis are specifically to heal through prayer, Christian Science is herein given a brief synopsis of its own. (A few splinter groups, like Science of Mind, have formed and evolved from former C.S. teachers, but they remain primarily based upon and proceeding from Christian Science itself).
Christian Science was founded by Mary Baker Eddy, a woman who was healed solely through prayer after physicians had given upon her. Thereafter, she devoted her life to discovering the “science” of metaphysical healing, and to teaching and communicating her methods to the public. As there is a significant body of verifiable healings on everything from tuberculosis and cancer to gunshot wounds attributed to Christian Science, some legitimacy must be given its claims. Because of its specificity, some detail will follow.
Christian Science defines God in seven synonyms: love, soul, spirit, mind, life, truth, principle. Because the Bible attests that God is one, the great “I Am,” the only cause and effect, and all good, Christian Science prayer follows the track that there can therefore be nothing that is not spiritual. The material, human experience that we accept as reality is merely the projection of a limited understanding that we accept as real, a “mesmerism” that blinds us to our true spiritual being and existence. As our understanding increases, it is scientifically impossible for our experience not to reflect these changes in our understanding.
Specific to anger management, if God is one, and that one is the only mind, then the only thought that really exists or has power is this mind, which is all good and all love. This love is a law, and indeed the only law. Man’s anger [and all ills] are described as a self-delusion that he is or ever has been separate from this good. Man’s current state is merely a false concept of God. Man is described as the reflection of this mind (which is also love, life, etc…) and to be angry or to be in conflict is to essentially accept that God can be at war with himself/herself, since we are all unique and individual reflections of that one. In the Christian Science “textbook,” Science And Health With Key To The Scriptures (1910), Eddy writes, “The prayer that reforms the sinner and heals the sick is an absolute faith that all things are possible to God, a spiritual understanding of Him, an unselfed love.” A Christian Science prayer “treatment” might be as follows: “God is love and God is mind; therefore, there can be no angry or hateful thoughts, no thoughts of self. God is the only “I,” and all is love and love’s infinite manifestation. I [you] are a reflection of that mind, love, and therefore I [you] and everyone and everything is right now part of mind’s action. I cannot think, see, hear, feel or experience anything unlike principle’s loving, ordered, compassionate, healing thoughts.” It is interesting to note that such prayer includes affirmation and denial, a premise adopted by many psychological cognitive approaches that developed much later than the late 1800’s when Eddy began to publish and work.
According to Christian Scientists, there is no matter or material condition to be healed, merely a change in thought which moves us away from the mesmeric unreality and toward God, the only reality. This change in thought appears to our limited sense as though a physical healing (including character transformation) has taken place. To illustrate: to do a complicated mathematical problem and arrive at the wrong answer is not to assume that the laws of mathematics are flawed. The laws exist, unchanged and perfect, and it is up to us to rely on the laws to properly solve the problem. A wrong answer means simply a mistaken notion. By going back over the problem and finding the point or points where an error occurs is all that is needed to correct the problem.
To further the analogy, a child who learns simple addition and the multiplication tables cannot be expected to solve complex equations of trigonometry or calculus. The child is relying on the same law as the “higher” mathematics, but their understanding of that law has not expanded sufficiently to include the dynamic and broad scope of the prospects covered by those mathematical laws. Yet, as they study and practice availing themselves of that same law, their ability to apply this law will deepen and expand.
The last one hundred pages of Science And Health (1910), by Eddy, are testimonials from those healed of physical and emotional problems merely through reading the text, claiming an active transformation in their belief system from reading the ideas discussed. It invoked a transformation in their being and perspective.