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7/30/2012

The simple theology that heals

Christian Science has this beautiful, clear, pure, spiritual simplicity to it. The entire theology can be boiled down to a few basic points:

1) God exists.
2) God is good.
3) God is all.
4) The universe, including man, is the reflection of God.
5) There is no evil.

Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer of Christian Science, explained that her work consisted of 2 parts:

1) Discovery of this Science – of these five basic points
2) Proof by present demonstration that this is the Principle by which Jesus healed.

We can’t have the discovery without the proof.

Mrs. Eddy discovered the action of the divine Mind on human minds and bodies. But limited mortal thought patterns have worn a groove in collective human consciousness, probing, diagnosing and picking apart matter as both cause and effect. Hence we are drawn into thinking that problems are material and thus complicated or difficult to heal.

For Christ Jesus, theology and medicine were one. Jesus’ theology is simple and clear. God is all, Good. Evil is nothing, unreal. What we face in every case is a challenge to the simple theology of the Christ. Can we depend on the fact that God is good? Can we prove it? Is man really reflection – the image and likeness of God? Can we demonstrate it?

Every case touches on a theological question. The task of a Christian healer is to simply answer the question and watch the proof appear.

The work should always be this simple. But it isn’t without opposition. That which Mrs Eddy named mortal mind – limited, matter-based reasoning that generates doubt and fear - would make the task of healing seem complicated, unclear and difficult. Fear and doubt impel us to overwork, or underwork the healing activity of prayer, to doubt our experience with the Christ, to change methods repeatedly and ultimately let the problem run the case.

I received a phone call from a father whose child had jumped from a tree house and injured his calf. It appeared to be broken. I was asked to pray for him while the family sorted out the practical care. When I hung up the phone I immediately thought, Well, God, what do you have to say about this?

I had Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures open on my desk. My eyes fell on a statement of Jesus found on page 45, “Spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have.”

Looking up from the book, I thought, Don’t be fooled by the picture of flesh and bones. That is not who this child really is. His substance is Spirit. All that he is and has comes from the Spirit that is God.

It seemed such a simple response to the theological question, Is this boy the image and likeness of God?

As I considered the implications in prayer – that he was in fact spiritual and that anything pro or con going on with flesh and bones didn’t touch him – a doubt cropped up. I wanted to be sure I was getting the message correctly. I wondered, But wasn’t Jesus just talking about himself? Then I turned the page and read, “The divine Spirit, which identified Jesus thus centuries ago, has spoken through the inspired Word and will speak through it in every age and clime. It is revealed to the receptive heart, and is again seen casting out evil and healing the sick.” (46)

OK, I thought, so Spirit knows this child the same way it knew Jesus - as perfect, spiritual, whole, unbroken, invulnerable, unfallen. The same Spirit voicing truth through Jesus' words to his disciples was communicating to me in the inspired Word of Science and Health in this age. My receptive heart was accepting the message.

Then up popped a fear. Can it be this easy? What about the broken bone? Don’t I have to do something about this in my prayer?

I looked down once again at the book and read the next phrase as though it was being spoken with force, “The Master said plainly that physique was not Spirit…”

I remembered Jesus’ instruction in the Sermon on the Mount and thought of it in relation to prayer, “Let your statement be, 'Yes, yes ' or 'No, no'; anything beyond these is of evil." Matthew 5:37

I needed to say Yes, Yes to the plain and simple reality of unbroken, uninterrupted spiritual being. And I needed to say a direct and clear No, No to the physical belief that the child was material and breakable.

That was it. I consented and said YES, YES. In fact, I was so taken by what I was saying YES to, that I forgot the case entirely and continued reading.

The phone rang about 30 minutes later. It was the mother. She told me that two minutes after they placed the call, she was holding her son and praying to know what to do next. They had discussed calling an ambulance or driving him to the hospital. Then they heard a distinct sound coming from his leg “like the sound of a zipper.” And he was healed just like that.

The pure simple theology of the Christ is revealed. And it heals.

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7/4/2012

Cast the beam out of your own eye - a Radical Acts of Jesus post by Kay Olson, CSB

Jesus once said, “Judge not according to the appearance, but judge righteous judgment.” (John 7:24) He also said, First cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye.” (Matthew 7:5) I think this emphasis on what we see and how we judge problems before our eyes can make a huge difference when it comes to healing the sick.

A little girl hurt her arm while playing on the school playground and was sent home. When her dad tried to care for the injury, she said, “Daddy, don’t see what you are going to look at!”

This little girl attended the Christian Science Sunday School and had been learning about God as Spirit, the only creator, and of His only creation as spiritual. She intuitively knew that the injury had nothing to do with her true and perfect spiritual selfhood as God’s child.

While he cared for the physical injury, the dad saw, or understood, that his daughter’s spiritual, God-created selfhood, was untouched by evil, hence there was no basis for harm. The Dad was touched by his daughter’s faith and understanding. No doubt, this influenced his own prayer, and healing quickly followed.

Mary Baker Eddy placed a lot of importance on what we look at when praying for healing. She wrote, "The sculptor turns from the marble to his model in order to perfect his conception. We are all sculptors, working at various forms, moulding and chiseling thought. What is the model before mortal mind? Is it imperfection, joy, sorrow, sin, suffering? Have you accepted the mortal model? Are you reproducing it? hen you are haunted in your work by vicious sculptors and hideous forms." (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, 248)

Further on she used Jesus’ example to show us a way out. She explained, “Jesus beheld in Science the perfect man, who appeared to him where sinning mortal man appears to mortals. In this perfect man the Saviour saw God's own likeness, and this correct view of man healed the sick. Thus Jesus taught that the kingdom of God is intact, universal, and that man is pure and holy.” (Ibid. 476)

I have seen, time and time again, that Jesus' approach to healing – looking for and seeing the perfect likeness of God – is quick and effective.

Once, when my son was a teenager, an unsightly growth developed on one of his fingers. He asked a doctor to check it out and was told that it was unusual and would take a long time to heal. My son thought he could get faster results from prayer and decided to approach the situation from the spiritual standpoint of Christian Science. We prayed about his spiritual identity as God’s child untouched, unseen and unmarred by evil.

Shortly after, one evening my son was teasing his sister. In the process, he bumped his finger which began to bleed a lot. Grabbing a towel to clean up, I thought that the scene I was witnessing – of teasing or of bleeding - couldn’t possibly have anything to do with Spirit, God, or with my son, His perfectly formed, well-behaved child. As I prayed, I no longer saw what I was looking at.

I bandaged his finger and made sure he was OK, and I left with my husband to go to a long-planned dinner engagement with friends. I continued to pray to see only what was spiritually true about my son.

During the dinner, our friends’ phone rang and it was our son. He couldn’t wait to tell us the strange growth had simply dropped clean off! He was healed.

Kay Olson CSB is a Christian Science practitioner and teacher in Pennsylvania, USA. Her blog today supports “Radical Acts” on Time4thinkers.com - a summer program, online and ecumenical – encouraging and supporting the practice of 18 of Jesus radical statements to his followers. You can click on this link to find out more. Once you do, we hope you will join in. There are some pretty amazing things being shared by the radical actors!

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3/17/2012

For the children - a guest post by Kay Olson, CSB

A few days ago, my husband and I opened our newspaper to a troubling story. The front page featured a picture of an old, ratty, dirty, dilapidated school bus sitting in the middle of a ragged, muddy field. Two children, a 10 year old and 5 year old, had been found living in the bus by themselves. I thought, “Those dear children – I hope they are being cared for.”

Then I remembered a conversation I had with someone many years ago. I was walking across the parking lot to the grocery store when this complete stranger approached me. She just wanted to tell me how much she admired the colorful jacket I was wearing. I thanked her for the compliment and was ready to move along when she suddenly grabbed my lapels, looked directly into my eyes, and shouted with great urgency, “Pray for the children! Please, pray for the children!”

She held on so tightly that I quickly promised that I certainly would do just that. Finally, she let me go and walked away. I hurried into the store.

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The simple theology that heals

Cast the beam out of your own eye - a Radical Acts of Jesus post by Kay Olson, CSB

For the children - a guest post by Kay Olson, CSB

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The simple theology that heals

Cast the beam out of your own eye - a Radical Acts of Jesus post by Kay Olson, CSB

For the children - a guest post by Kay Olson, CSB

Find me on YouTube​

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INFORMATION

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Find me on YouTube