Christian science and Christ healing

The Bible says in Psalm 34:19, ‘Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the Lord deliverers him out of them all.’ In the teachings of Christian Science, this Scriptural statement is a call to turn to God wholeheartedly and trust Him for healing, rather than it signifying a helpless acceptance, or worse still, a fatalistic expectation of affliction.

The Church of Christ Scientist, informally called the Christian Science Church, founded by Reverend Mary Baker Eddy in 1879, is designed to commemorate the words and works of our Master, Christ Jesus, which should ‘reinstate primitive Christianity and its lost element of healing’. Based on Christ Jesus promises in John 8:31,32 that anyone who continues in His word is His disciple indeed, and in John 14:12 that the works He did, His disciples will do also, the Christian Science Church recommends that members should strive to demonstrate how God’s Word heals the sick quickly and wholly, because this is the only practical proof substantiating a Christian’s claim to Christianity.

Endeavouring to experience Christ healing is not a licence to deny sickness, but to challenge it with the Word of God, which Hebrews reminds us, is ‘the sword of the Spirit’. In Science and Health with key to the Scriptures, Mary Baker Eddy writes, ‘To admit that sickness is a condition over which God has no control, is to presuppose that omnipotent power is powerless on some occasions’. She also writes that God is no more the author of sickness than He is of sin. In other words, instead of God sending sickness, He destroys it, when we turn to Him, as Jesus Christ teaches us to.

Important and desirable as healing is, the primary purpose of salvation, for which Christ Jesus became incarnate, and submitted to the crucifixion, prior to His glorious resurrection and ascension, is to take away the sins of the world, so that man has eternal life. This is also the emphasis in the Christian Science Church. It is wrong to ignore sickness, rather, Christians should focus on healing, just like Jesus did; and this is the healing, not only of sickness, but also especially of sin. For anyone, who desires to seek Christ healing, the comforting assurance is that it is God that heals.

Solanke is of the Christian Science Committee on Publication for Nigeria and the West