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By David Wright Sunday morning an AM radio station in Louisville carried a program sponsored by Christian Scientists. In Boston, Massachusetts, Mary Baker Eddy began the Christian Science movement when she established her first congregation (The First Church of Christ, Scientist) in 1879. Eddy taught her followers to deny the reality of matter. According to the host of the radio program and his guests, men and women reflect the perfection of God and are therefore perfect. The cause of sickness is fear. If a sick person accepts the reality of his perfection and forgets the illness, it will go away and leave behind no symptoms. It sounds great. Just deny the reality of your physical body. Forget you have cancer and it goes away with no need for surgery, radiation, or chemotherapy. But is it true? Does the Bible support the writings of Mary Baker Eddy? For instance, do the Scriptures teach that fear is the root of illness? One day Peter and John went to the temple at the hour of prayer and met a man “lame from birth” (Acts 3:2). He was “more than forty years old” (4:22). Are we to believe that this congenital disability was the result of fear? Even in his mother's womb, was the unborn child worried about entering the world with disabled feet and ankles? Well, perhaps the lame man's mother somehow imposed disability on her unborn son by being fearful. But that won't work either. In Jerusalem Jesus saw a man “blind from his birth” (John 9:1). The disciples asked: “Who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” (v. 2). Neither, Jesus replied. The beggar's congenital blindness just happened. It was nobody's fault. Yes, we are made in the image of a perfect God (Gen. 1:26-27). No, we are not perfect ourselves. Our sins corrupt God's image in us. A consequence of that corruption is sickness. And denying reality fails to change it. Many Christian Scientists read the writings of Mary Baker Eddy with the aid of prescription glasses or contacts. Why don't they just forget that they cannot see and read without them? |