Dysfunction can be healed

from the Christian Science Sentinel

Christian Science starts with peace to heal any dysfunction.

Betty, the word dysfunctional resonates with many people these days, whether they’re talking about a dysfunctional family, about the human body, or about dysfunctional governments. What is the Christian Science approach to treating and healing dysfunction?

Probably the most basic thing I could say would be that we must start from a different premise. Rather than trying to detect what the dysfunction is in order to see through it in an attempt to bring healing and to restore peace, we should start not with the dysfunction, which is temporary, but with the idea of peace, which is permanent. Where did the peace come from? Peace isn’t something that you strive to get or that you have to restore. Peace is there first. When you start with peace, you have the answer. Truth always exposes any error.

What are some basic, Bible-based truths behind peaceful functioning?

I think the Sermon on the Mount says it all—that we are “the light of the world.”

Biblically based, I think the Sermon on the Mount says it all—that we are “the light of the world” (Matt. 5:14). So we start with, What is this light? It’s the enlightenment that comes from knowing that there is one God, a loving Father-Mother God, whom we love with our whole heart and soul and mind. And this one God is, as the Bible says, Spirit, divine Love, intelligence, law. It’s one God, universal. And this means not only one God, but also the only—free from any denominational restrictions. When we can start with the truth—with God as the only Mind, the only intelligence and love—we are expressing that light. Jesus offered all of the Mosaic commandments in two great commands: to love God with your whole heart and soul and mind, and to love your neighbor as yourself. It starts, then, with your relation to God. When that is well established, then you’re ready and equipped to help and love someone else, as you would like to be loved and helped.

So, as we get a better grasp of the nature of the Maker, we’ll see better what God has made and maintained?

Yes! That you are His image and likeness, as the opening chapter of the Bible states. You are His expression. And being God’s expression takes away all sense of repression or depression or suppression, because you have found the way by staying with the allness of one God, universal, impartial. Christian Science is based wholly on the two great commandments of Christ Jesus. It is Biblically based.

What you’re saying is that there’s a spiritual lawfulness to normal function.

When we start by accepting the peace that God has created and given us, the dysfunction just vanishes.

Absolutely. Its basis—even with the function of a material body—is the fact that there is no resistance, friction, divisiveness, or separation from God, no matter what comes into our experience. In Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, Mary Baker Eddy wrote, “God is everywhere, and nothing apart from Him is present or has power” (Science and Health, p. 473). If we’re God’s image and likeness, then we’re not God, but we have all of His qualities. We are Godlike. We have all of the security of divine law, all of God’s reflected intelligence, all of the capacity to love impartially and universally, as God does. Dysfunction, then, is not something to be gotten rid of or healed, but when we start by accepting the peace that God has created and given us, the dysfunction just vanishes. And that’s how healing is accomplished in Christian Science—not by trying to get rid of a broken leg, a painful lump, or a headache …

Or with a person who’s been a headache to you?

Exactly! But rather, starting in our prayer for healing with acknowledging and beholding the man and woman of God’s creating, as spiritual, always whole, functioning in perfect harmony—at peace.

Betty, what you’re saying about this spiritual reality, this peace that exists in God’s universe, seems to fly in the face of a discordant and dysfunctional world that we see around us. How do we get to that state of harmony that you’re talking about?

Well, it sometimes does look as if there’s total confusion—with our economy, with the divorce rate, with what has happened in our families, and so forth. So, how can I sit here and say, “Oh, just start with peace. Everything’s lovely”? It’s not a Pollyanna thing.

It’s a matter of recognizing right in the midst of the malfunction or dysfunction, that God’s work is already done.

Now, of course, there’s lots of beauty out there to be seen, and people are seeing it and finding it. But as far as functioning, working together in a harmonious fashion, that’s another story—whether it’s your body not functioning properly with some acute pain, or whether you’re saying, “But my condition is chronic”—well, it’s not a matter of simply saying everything is all right. It’s a matter of recognizing the possibility of discerning, right in the midst of the malfunction or dysfunction, that God’s work is already done. It has to do with grasping more about God’s law of flawless function. If you can start by praying with the expectation that one God, good, is the source that gives you an answer every time, and that His law is universal and impartial, then you can feel, experience, the effect of living under this benevolent law. Christian Science calls it the law of Christ. We see that the Christ has always been here, as Abraham knew. Certainly Joseph was aware of the Christ, and prophets like Isaiah—they all knew the eternal Christ. It’s always been here, but it was proven, made practical, through the works of Jesus. He gave the command to anyone who would follow him, that he or she would be able to do the works that he did, and even “greater works.” Not that today we’re exceeding what Jesus did, but the challenge now is to recognize that God certainly doesn’t know of the evil, the dysfunction, any more today than He did when Jesus proved the reality of good through healing the sick and brokenhearted. We don’t have to know that two and two is four. It just is. God’s truth and peace just is.

So, as you pray for someone, you’re really listening for what God is declaring true right there at that moment?

Yes, about that person—and not at some future time but at that moment. Truth does not need a time process. It is.

Is there a specific example from your practice that illustrates the kind of healing approach that you’re talking about, for restoring normal function?

Oh so many examples! I’ve been a Christian Science practitioner for 50 years now. In my own case, although I’d been a Christian Scientist all my life, it was during my university years when I really discovered what Christian Science is. This was during World War II, when my mother told me that my brother was dying of spinal meningitis. I went berserk on the telephone. We’d never faced any major sickness in our family. At that time I was living with a Christian Science practitioner.

When I got off the phone, the practitioner looked at me, and she saw that I was really trembling. She suggested that I read a certain passage on page 495 in Science and Health, and it starts out: “When the illusion of sickness or sin tempts you, cling steadfastly to God and His idea. Allow nothing but His likeness to abide in your thought. Let neither fear nor doubt overshadow your clear sense and calm trust, that the recognition of life harmonious—as Life eternally is—can destroy any painful sense of, or belief in, that which Life is not. Let Christian Science, instead of corporeal sense, support your understanding of being, and this understanding will supplant error with Truth, replace mortality with immortality, and silence discord with harmony.” I can say it slowly now, but at that time I said it so rapidly, read it so fast, that it meant nothing to me.

It was four o’clock in the afternoon on a Friday when my mother had called. I kept thinking, I ought to fly out there, but you couldn’t fly anyplace during World War II, and you couldn’t go on trains. So Mother said, “No, we’ll wait; they’ll let us know.” She seemed so calm! She asked me not to telephone again as all was well.

There was a Christian Science wartime minister—as they were called then—who was outside my brother’s room praying for him. Since meningitis was contagious, he was not allowed in to see my brother. So, I just kept reading that one paragraph in Science and Health that my practitioner friend had given me. I kept working with those ideas, even though my fear was just rampant. This went on for the next 24 hours—no sleep, just panic.

My ‘clear sense’ and my ‘calm trust’ were spiritual qualities that belonged to me right at that moment.

About four o’clock on Saturday afternoon, as my thinking quieted down, I began to reason, “Oh, this news about my brother, it’s an illusion that is trying to say, yes, everything there looks really desperate, but are you going to believe it? Or, are you going to start with letting ‘neither fear nor doubt overshadow your clear sense and calm trust’ in God?” And I loved the fact of my “clear sense” (because I’d been anything but clear!), and my “calm trust” (I’d been anything but calm), but those were spiritual qualities that belonged to me right at that moment. And they belong to everyone, in every moment. I needed to see that I could take that as true and go with it.

Then, suddenly, such a sense of peace came over me. The peace was so great that I had no desire or urgency to call my mother. I went to bed, and I didn’t hear anything until the following Tuesday. When she did call, she said, “He’s out of the coma, and everything’s fine.” It was a wonderful healing. Now, it wasn’t my own prayerful work that healed my brother, but it did heal me! Out of this healing, I found that sense of peace that convinced me that if I were ever faced with anything, any illness, I would know what to do.

I’ve heard it said that if you have your vertical relationship in good shape—your relationship with God—then the horizontal relationships will take care of themselves. You’ll be impelled to do the kind of universal loving and compassionate caring for others that are basic to healing through prayer.

That’s so important—and the joy it brings to you. One of the main concerns today is with dysfunctional families. It’s been wisely said that a family can be the place of peace and harmony, but it has to come first from the individual, next from the family, and then harmony can flow outward to the community. That rightly puts the onus on the individual’s role in preventing or healing dysfunction in any form.

What are some of the causes for dysfunctional relationships and how can we pray more effectively to turn them around?

The list is so long, but it starts with confusion, with not knowing what you’re supposed to do or be within a relationship. There’s also the sense of pressure that comes with transitions out of old ways, with traditions changing. Then there’s the feeling of being misunderstood, jealousy, impatience, conflicts of personalities, materialism, self-pity, self-condemnation, broken dreams and disappointments, resistance to change—all of these things would contribute to dysfunction.

How do you as a Christian Scientist deal with these things?

Let me answer by telling you more about that time when I was living with a Christian Science practitioner. I was studying at the University of Chicago, reading all the philosophers—Aristotle, Plato, clear down the list—and I discovered that here I was, some 2,000 years later, discussing the same things, and nobody seemed to have found the answers to the big questions of life. They were apparently still looking for solutions.

One day, after I experienced an instantaneous healing of extreme pain when my practitioner friend just looked at me in prayer, I realized, “Wait a minute … she starts with solutions. She’s not working toward them.” I knew then that my career would be about starting with solutions, through prayer. I wanted to be a healer! It happened earlier than I expected, when I was first married and had children, and began getting calls for help through prayer.

Christian Science starts with the solution—with the wholeness and onlyness of God.

Christian Science starts with the solution, with an entirely different premise—with the wholeness and onlyness of God. Not that there’s good and evil, God and a devil. Certainly, in human existence we’re faced with this appearance of dualism all the time. But the basic truth—that God is All and is good, and cares constantly for all of us, maintains our wholeness—when you start with this as your premise, it becomes your solution. There isn’t another force or influence that can cause you to be disappointed, to be stuck in self-pity, anger, impatience, loss. Those have no place in the goodness God has made; they’re mistaken beliefs about human mortal life that are imposed on us. They don’t belong to us any more than “two plus two equals five” belongs to mathematical truth.

Sometimes people fear getting into a relationship because they’re afraid it will eventually fall apart. What can enable us to feel confident about entering a new relationship or about repairing a dysfunctional one?

The first thing one would have to do, in his or her own heart, is to find out what actually is the basis for a relationship, what makes up a family, a marriage. In that seminal book by Mary Baker Eddy, Science and Health, there’s a whole chapter on marriage. And while I don’t counsel people who come to me as a practitioner, I do urge them to read that chapter, frequently, not just give it a once-over. It’s a magnificent statement written from a Biblical standpoint, and it supports everything Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount. The Sermon on the Mount [see Matthew 5–7] tells all one needs in order to have a good and well-functioning body, marriage, business—a good anything and everything. The basis of good relationships is given all the way through that sermon in the Bible, and what Mrs. Eddy has given in Science and Health is the fulfilling of Jesus’ promise of a Comforter that, as he said, would “bring … to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you” (John 14:26). And what he’s said is the truth of God’s nature, of our relationship with God, and of one individual to another.

If there are religious differences between two people—political differences, differences of any kind—we can have that willingness to listen to the other person and understand where they’re coming from. Everyone has opinions, but we need to remember that an opinion is a belief strong enough to be an impression but not strong enough to be the truth. Building harmonious relationships begins with knowing we all have the same Mind. Mind is such a good synonym for God—the Mind, the one creative, protecting, all-knowing and all-acting intelligence—and when you stay with that as your foundation, and talk together, there’s no reason you can’t see and enjoy “family” as an intact unit, with all the flexibility, diversity, and rich appreciation of each other’s uniqueness that’s natural to us as God’s offspring. It may take work, persistence, humility, and yet more love, but the solution is there to be found!