Christian Science and responsible healthcare for children

Sarah Hyatt | from the Christian Science Sentinel

Experience proves that Christian Science is responsible healthcare for children.

It was a sound every mother dreads: I heard our 18-month-old son, Andy, screaming in agony across the hall, and I rushed into his room. He was too young to really tell me what was wrong, but I noticed him clutching his ear. I wanted nothing more at that moment than for Andy to be free from the pain. I picked him up, comforting him as best I could, and immediately called a Christian Science practitioner. She right away agreed to pray with us, even though it was in the wee hours of the morning.

I remember thinking, “If this isn’t healed quickly, I’ll consider something else. No child should suffer like this.” I sat with Andy in a rocker and began to sing hymns to him. I used each hymn as a prayer acknowledging that God is good and God is All, His goodness being all there could possibly be. And I reasoned that since God is good, His will for this child had to be for health and well-being; this pain was obviously not good, not from God, and subsequently without reality.

If I wouldn’t let my child suffer, then why would I think it might be Love’s will or plan for him to be in pain?

“God is one,” wrote Mary Baker Eddy in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures. And she continued, “The allness of Deity is His oneness” (Science and Health, p. 267). There cannot be dualism: good and bad, life and death, health and sickness, for “if a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand” (Mark 3:24, New International Version). The Bible also teaches that God is Love (see I John 4:16). If I wouldn’t let my child suffer, then why would I think it might be Love’s will or Love’s plan for him to be in pain? Am I a better parent than an Almighty God who is Love itself? My reasoning could be summed up in a question that later occurred to me: “Which part of Almighty don’t you understand—the All or the Mighty?”

Very quickly a great sense of peace came over both of us. Andy quieted right down and went to sleep. We had a twin bed in his room along with his crib, so I lay down there with him. I wanted to stay with him for a while to make sure that he was OK. Then I felt the pillow we shared getting very wet. Something in his ear had apparently opened and drained on the pillow, but he was sleeping soundly and did so for the rest of the night. When he woke up the next morning, he was his usual happy, vibrant, energetic self. The wonderful thing about this healing was that Andy never experienced another earache after that. It was a complete and permanent healing.

Don’t we all trust what we’ve found to be effective? If that was the only healing I’d experienced or witnessed with my children—or if my children were the only ones healed through prayer in Christian Science—then it could be dismissed as anecdotal or a mere coincidence. But the record of Christian Science healing has been richly documented for well over 125 years.

Creation is governed by divine laws, which are subject to proof.

The very name Christian Science suggests at once its spiritual basis and essence. Each word, Christian and Science, is equally important. Science points to spiritual laws established by God, by good, the Source of all being, the divine Principle governing all. Coming from Principle, the one Lawgiver, these laws are self-enacting, self-revealing, self-enforcing. The whole of creation is governed by divine laws, which are subject to proof. Health and harmony are the inevitable result as they are understood and yielded to in obedience.

The word Christian is a reminder that scientific laws embody the compassion, the love, the tenderness, and the healing authority that Jesus demonstrated in his remarkable career. The Science of Christianity is rooted in obedience to the two great commandments that Jesus gave: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself’” (Matt. 22:37–39, NIV). Mary Baker Eddy insisted that to fully understand how to live these two commandments, a student of this Science must use “a priori” reasoning, or reasoning from cause to effect (see Science and Health, p. 467).

The material sciences, based on the observations of the physical senses, begin with effect and reason back to cause. Christian Science begins with Cause—an infinite, all-powerful Spirit who is entirely good—and reasons out to man (all men, women, and children) in the image and likeness of Deity. Considered from this perspective, we are, therefore, entirely spiritual, not material beings with a spiritual component. Right reasoning alone doesn’t heal disease, but it does lead to spiritual insight, inspiration, revelation, and healing.

Along with this spiritually based reasoning, Christian Science points out the importance of living the compassion Jesus exemplified. Mary Baker Eddy desired to ease the suffering she saw around her and had a special place in her heart for children. One of her early healing works is recorded by a mother. In a letter to Mrs. Eddy, she wrote that two years earlier, when Mrs. Eddy had visited, her son had been healed permanently of a disease of the bowels. At age 18 months he had been reduced to a skeleton because of this illness. The physicians had given up on him. But Mrs. Eddy tenderly picked him up, held and kissed him; then she prayed with the spiritual laws she’d discovered. The boy was well within an hour (see Yvonne von Fettweis and Robert Warneck, Mary Baker Eddy: Christian Healer, pp. 79–80).

God does not stop at the doors of a hospital or a doctor’s office.

It’s important to understand that while God’s laws are absolute and unchanging—and when understood lead to healing—they cannot be countermanded by any doctrine that would prohibit parents from doing whatever they feel is in the best interest of their children. Simply put, God tenderly meets people where they are in their spiritual understanding and gently leads them forward. God does not stop at the doors of a hospital or a doctor’s office. I’ve loved reminding my own children that no matter where they go, “God got there first!” Children are safe in their Father-Mother’s care.

As soon as my own children were old enough to understand that there were other methods of healthcare besides Christian Science, my husband and I would offer them the choice of calling a practitioner to pray with them (so they were involved in the healing work themselves) or of arranging to see a physician or visit an emergency room. It was a sincere desire on our part to let them choose what they felt was best for them, and they knew it.

On one occasion our older son had an injury on the tennis court, resulting in a deep cut right alongside his eye. His coach was with him when I drove up just after the injury occurred. He felt that the wound would require 10–12 stitches. We were a couple of blocks from a hospital ER, and I offered my son the option of stitches or calling a Christian Science practitioner. He had come to trust God through his own experiences, and he chose the latter.

So we prayed together in the car, acknowledging that there could be no carelessness or accidents when all is governed by the divine Principle, Love. By the time we reached home, all the bleeding had stopped, and the wound had begun to close over. He called the practitioner, and they agreed to pray together. When he went to his tennis practice the next day, there was only a thin line where the cut had been. He was cleared to play immediately by his coach.

When there are legal accommodations for practicing spiritual healing, it’s important to recognize that those accommodations don’t guarantee the safety of children or their exemption from illness. But preventative medicine is always the best medicine. When I signed the religious accommodation form that allowed my children to forgo mandatory vaccinations as Christian Scientists, I knew that I had a responsibility to see where their true immunity came from.

I woke about an hour before my children did each day and spent that hour praying for them.

I woke about an hour before my children did each day and spent that hour praying for them, acknowledging that they were subject only to laws of health and harmony—and that would necessarily include immunity from contagious diseases. One way that I thought about it was considering the idea of integrity, which comes from a Latin root meaning whole and untouched. Their integrity had its source in their Maker, the Holy One. I realized that I would never wonder if they were going to wake up one morning and go rob a bank or murder someone. Their integrity, their honesty, their sense of justice would never allow that. I found a statement in Science and Health that helped me see the implications of that: “The moral man has no fear that he will commit a murder, and he should be as fearless on the question of disease” (Science and Health, p. 406).

Praying with these ideas and many others over the years led to freedom from contagious diseases. On three occasions there were measles outbreaks in our children’s schools. Each time we prayed together about the powerlessness of a so-called law of contagion that would try to trump God’s law of health. In two instances there were no further cases, and my sons had only a few hours of minor symptoms in one of those before they were completely free. In the third case, the school decided to enforce a state law that requires all unvaccinated students to be vaccinated when there’s an outbreak of a contagious childhood disease. We immediately had our son vaccinated to comply with the law. That was done both to be obedient to the law and to ease the fears of other parents and children. Again, it was a Christian thing to do.

Many parents pray for their children, but the premise that sickness may be God’s will or that at the very least God allows sickness, often leads to prayers just asking (and sometimes begging) God to make their children better. Occasionally some parents may mistakenly believe that it’s God’s will for their child to die even if they don’t understand why that should be necessary. Such a misguided view cannot lead to healing.

Sickness is never God’s will for anyone.

In Christian Science, prayer has a different starting point: that sickness is never God’s will for anyone. In the Lord’s Prayer we’re taught by Jesus to pray for God’s will to be done “in earth, as it is in heaven” (Matt. 6:10). In Revelation 21:4 we find a description of heaven: “And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.” Surely Jesus wouldn’t have asked us to pray for the impossible. We can safely pray for God’s will to be done, knowing that His will would be health, restoration, and regeneration—never illness, disease, or death. Those prayers are far above faith healing; they are affirmations of divine perfection and power that come from a spiritual understanding of God’s laws of health and harmony, and they result in healing.

Children are precious gifts from our common Parent, and they deserve the very best care that we can give them. Christian Scientists rely on the method of healing that has been most effective in their lives. They strive to be law-abiding, good neighbors and citizens, and wise, loving, caring parents. The laws of God that they apply in their prayers for their children are universally available to anyone.

Sarah Hyatt is a Christian Science practitioner and teacher. She lives in Charleston, South Carolina.