Innocent of illness
Often, guilt and innocence relate to the laws we are to obey as members of a society. But there’s also a different take on innocence that has relevance to our lives – one that opens the door to freedom from illness and torment. It stems from an idea that people were seeing more and more clearly even back in biblical days, with healing effect: that God’s infinitely powerful goodness is what truly governs, and this pure goodness is reflected in His children.
In our own era, this insightful facet to prayer still is effective. To understand how it can work, it’s helpful to step back and consider this question: Why has God judged us to be innocent?
Christian Science teaches that the purity of God, whom the Bible names Love and Spirit, is reflected naturally in all that God creates – including each of us as His children. It is Spirit’s doing that our true nature is spiritual, unencumbered by materiality and the evils associated with it.
Spirit ensures that its creation forever remains purely innocent and spiritual. You and I are not waiting for some future day to become God’s spiritual, innocent children. Despite what the physical senses indicate, this state of existence is the spiritual fact for us now and always.
Innocence is found in all of God’s immortal creation. The notion that God’s creation is subject to material limitations is simply a mistaken accusation. We aren’t obliged to bow to or fear such an unfounded verdict or the punishment that is supposed to come with it. In “Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures,” Mary Baker Eddy, the discoverer of Christian Science, says, “We have no trials for sickness before the tribunal of divine Spirit. There, Man is adjudged innocent of transgressing physical laws, because there are no such laws. Our statute is spiritual, our Government is divine” (pp. 441-442).
Consider what the world has accused us of. We’ve been accused of being created by a material process; of having physical weaknesses, flaws, and vulnerabilities; of being perpetual victims, susceptible to any and all evils.
But that’s not man, a term that refers to all of us in our true, spiritual identity as God’s children. The only “accusations” that can be true and have power over God’s offspring are those that are true about God, because God – infinitely good divine Spirit – is the one almighty authority. Man images forth the perfection and goodness of God – and only that. Accusations that we are anything less than how Spirit made us are groundless because God has destined us to remain forever Godlike.
Throughout Jesus’ ministry, he demonstrated how an understanding of everyone’s innocence, or purity, as God’s spiritual offspring brings healing. This applies to us, too. The Bible promises, “Now is come salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of his Christ: for the accuser of our brethren is cast down” (Revelation 12:10).
At Christmastime one year, my wife found herself suffering from food poisoning. We prayed together, affirming her innocence as God’s child, in the spirit of these passages in Isaiah: “The Lord is exalted; for he dwelleth on high: he hath filled Zion with judgment and righteousness.... And the inhabitant shall not say, I am sick” (33:5, 24).
The more we prayed, the more clear it became that my wife, in her true nature as God’s child, wasn’t guilty of being a vulnerable mortal; she remained innocent, always expressing Spirit’s purity and wholeness. And the illness very quickly dissipated.
No matter what misconception about our real, spiritual identity we may have been accused of, God’s salvation and strength are here to acquit us. God loves us and constantly expresses innocence in us, and gives us the ability to recognize it. Always, God has found His children not guilty. It’s a joy to honor and live His verdict.
