Who needs the Bible, anyway?

She’d slept with the wrong person, and now she was about to die. Only one man, a stranger to her, could save her. But to do it, he might have to break the law, risking his own freedom. The clock was ticking. Would he save her?

No, it’s not the trailer for a new blockbuster. It’s a recap of a story in the Bible’s book of John (see 8:3-11). Religious officials had brought to Christ Jesus a woman who had been caught committing adultery, telling him that she should be stoned.

Their purpose was to entrap him in a violation of Mosaic law, which dictated that adulterers be put to death. If he tried to save her, they could accuse him of refusing to obey the law, potentially resulting in his arrest or, at a minimum, discrediting this man whose teachings about God were becoming highly popular.

But Jesus didn’t argue with them about the law. He asked them to look into their own hearts. “He that is without sin among you,” he said, “let him first cast a stone at her.” None of them could make that claim. They walked away, letting the woman live.

When you really think about it, the Bible is filled with all of the things that many people already love in books and movies – drama, intrigue, epic battles, love stories. Its pages are filled with moving songs, poetry, history, and mythology.

But when read understandingly, it has so much more to offer. If we’re receptive, it teaches us deeper lessons about who we truly are and where health, harmony, and happiness are to be found. In fact, reading the Bible for the deeper, spiritual inspiration within its pages can bring us healing.

The founder of Christian Science, Mary Baker Eddy, told of how she was healed of a life-threatening injury by reading a biblical account of Jesus’ healing of a man with palsy (see “Miscellaneous Writings 1883-1896,” p. 24). Elsewhere she wrote of the experience that she later found it “to be in perfect scientific accord with divine law” (“Retrospection and Introspection,” p. 24). She spent the rest of her life studying the Bible to learn the divine law behind her healing and to teach others how to heal the same way. She published what she learned in a textbook: “Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures.”

Without a “key,” the healing message of the Bible can seem locked behind language and storylines that, taken literally, may strike us today as antiquated or confusing, if not occasionally downright repellent. Mrs. Eddy herself noted that “the literal rendering of the Scriptures makes them nothing valuable, but often is the foundation of unbelief and hopelessness” (Miscellaneous Writings, p. 169).

But once we learn the importance of grasping the spiritual meaning of the Bible rather than the literal sense, understanding and inspiration flow naturally. Christian Scientists read Science and Health as a companion to the Bible because Science and Health provides the timeless context and the immortal explanations that unlock the way the Bible can bring healing to individual lives. It explains the action of Christ, the divine manifestation of God, which has come to human consciousness throughout all time, showing individuals how they can be lifted out of every evil circumstance and condition.

In the Bible story, the men who had wanted the woman executed walked away without condemning her. Jesus didn’t condemn her either. “Go, and sin no more,” he said. Christ had shown that God’s children, seen in their true, holy nature, are forever saved, not condemned.

This doesn’t apply to sin only. Do we believe we’ve been condemned by disease or accident to pain and suffering? Christ has not condemned us to any type of suffering. We, too, are free to go our way in health and harmony.

Even today, grasping the truth of God’s goodness and His creation’s forever expression of that goodness through study of the Bible is bringing healing to many. The spiritual sense of its words speaks to the hearts of individuals across time, across languages, across cultures. That spiritual sense is still available to those with the humility and desire to discover it.

Adapted from an editorial published in the Aug. 12, 2024 issue of the Christian Science Sentinel.