A little girl once enthusiastically described her encounter with a computer learning program. She explained that the program would give her a math problem, and if she solved it, would give her a reward.
“What’s the reward?” she was asked.
“It gives you another problem!”
“Another problem” can indeed be a reward when it is seen as an opportunity to grow and to prove our God-given capabilities. But in some instances – when we’re already struggling with pain, fear, sin, or grief – we may see another problem as a burden we can’t possibly hope to manage.
We tend to welcome challenges that we feel capable of mastering. It’s the fear of failure that makes us dread confronting a problem – what if we don’t know enough or aren’t strong enough or good enough to overcome it?
When questions like these confront us, we can turn to God for strength, reassurance, and answers. Love, another name for God, is good, all-powerful, and ever present. Therefore, good cannot be absent. Christ, the true idea of Love, sustains and comforts us by destroying fear and any sense of burden. It reveals our present health and harmony.
Christ acts in our consciousness to change thought. The reality is that we are already safe and whole as Love’s expression. Any suggestion that an adverse circumstance is too big for us is a lie – ultimately powerless. Christian Science refers to this lie as “animal magnetism.” “Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures” defines animal magnetism as “the false belief that mind is in matter, and is both evil and good; that evil is as real as good and more powerful” (Mary Baker Eddy, p. 103). Fear of failure is animal magnetism precisely because it argues that there is a power other than God, Spirit, and that this so-called power may be more than we can handle.
Every healing in Christian Science happens because we see, to some degree, our forever unity with Love, our divine Father-Mother. We grasp, even if just for a moment, that our real being never needed fixing – it had never stopped being perfect, because we never stop being God’s spiritual expression.
Anyone can demonstrate this spiritual understanding. In reality, every individual is made in the image and likeness of God and therefore reflects all of God’s power, wisdom, capability, and dominion. That’s why we can face challenges with confidence.
But this demonstration requires willingness to give up old ways of thinking and acting and begin to think and act in accord with God’s law. Like an athlete honing her skills, we strive each day to express a little more of our God-given power to listen only to God, to love more, and to overcome limits.
“Let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God.” This passage from the Bible’s book of Hebrews (12:1, 2) shows that Jesus kept his eyes on the high goal no matter what obstacles were in his path.
He is our Way-shower, pointing the way to our success. We can keep our eye on the goal of expressing increasing dominion over sin, disease, and death. This focus supports us when we’re tempted to feel discouraged. The Apostle Paul assures us, “Thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ” (I Corinthians 15:57).
Each demonstration we make is a foundation for a higher proof. A few years after he was healed of kidney stones, a man became fearful and discouraged when he found himself facing the same ailment. It had seemed a long, painful road to the previous healing, and he dreaded having to do it again.
Suddenly, it dawned on him that, despite how it appeared, it wasn’t the same challenge. He had already proven his freedom from that ailment. The new challenge was to recognize and overcome the temptation to believe that Christ had come to bring healing but had not remained to maintain that healing and his health. He knew that was impossible. The Christ-idea is as ever-present as God is.
He was released from fear and burden. A few days later, he realized that he no longer had any symptoms. Nor had he passed kidney stones. They had simply vanished.
With God’s help, there’s nothing we can’t handle.
Adapted from an editorial published in the Feb. 19, 2024, issue of the Christian Science Sentinel.
