An elegant, cutting-edge approach to health

Many people now use smart devices to monitor their heart and respiratory rate, temperature, and sleep. But is there a better way to care for our health?

The Bible offers an approach to living that includes less body consciousness but no less care for our well-being, including the body. The New Testament shows that God’s will for us is dominion over the body, and we realize this dominion by turning away from the body to God, infinite Love, and by finding our identity as a unique spiritual expression of this Love and its qualities, such as joy, wisdom, and goodness.

The concept that we are something beyond a physical body may seem abstract, but hundreds of thousands of people have experienced consistent health and vitality by understanding themselves in this way.

While many people hope that exhibiting certain indicators thought to be normal can reassure them that they are healthy, a higher hope can be found in the New Testament: “This then is the message which we have heard of [Christ Jesus], and declare unto you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all” (I John 1:5).

This starting point of God as infinite light and harmony, combined with the Bible’s description of our being created in God’s image and likeness, means that health is as integral to us as stripes are to a tiger. Thus, with relief and joy, not fear and stress, we find that we can be healthy by recognizing our spiritual nature and the divine law of harmony that holds us in health. This mental shift doesn’t ignore health problems, but instead moves us naturally to a model of well-being that’s based on the rock, Christ – the true idea of God – on God’s eternal, unchanging nature as the infinite, governing Principle, Love, and on our nature as God’s spiritual image.

Jesus, perfectly obedient to this Principle, helped his listeners make this mental shift. He taught them not to worry about the body but to seek first God’s righteous government. In this way, he said, we would see our needs met. Paul, a follower of Jesus, wrote that he was “willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord” (II Corinthians 5:8). Both Jesus and Paul were physically present to help others, but they never seemed to be controlled by the body.

Mary Baker Eddy’s study of the Scriptures showed her that our identity is not dependent on organic and biological conditions. She understood that health isn’t determined by a set of clinical measurements but by a consciousness of the omnipresence of divine Love and its harmony. She found that this consciousness heals human minds and bodies as we think and live in harmony with Love. While sickness may seem very real to the human mind (and, by extension, in the body), it doesn’t exist in the Mind that is God.

Therefore, each of us has, you could say, apostolic authority to show an ever-increasing dominion over illness. This comes about by seeing that disease is neither natural nor legitimate and by striving to have only thoughts from Mind, which bring out health and healing in our lives.

When learning of Christian Science, we begin to see that we can be healthy independent of a material medical system. However much we admire the compassion and dedication of health care professionals, we can grasp somewhat that health is the effect of striving to live in harmony with the supremacy of divine Love. When needed, we can meet sickness by turning to this all-harmonious Principle, Love.

This has been my experience. Without using conventional medical means, I have been free, traveling extensively – largely unhampered by illness – and enjoying active sports. I’ve never had to worry about waiting in emergency rooms, paying for drugs, or finding a doctor. On the whole, I’ve found that my health reflects the constant, dependable, omnipresent love of God.

This approach to health may mean mentally challenging material medical theories (for example, that getting a cold during certain seasons is inevitable). But I’ve found Christian Science to offer an elegant, cutting-edge approach to health because it deals with the root causes of disease – such as fear – on the basis of an infinite, all-good God and our own nature as the child of God.

Beyond all ways of measuring and analyzing the body, God gives us confidence to prove our God-given health today.

Adapted from an editorial published in the June 12, 2023, issue of the Christian Science Sentinel.