What is Health?

I've been asking myself: What is health, anyway?

I don't think it's about something that is absent- physical diseases, sickness or debilitation, -as much as it's about what needs to be present: wholeness, completeness and soundness both physical and spiritual.

Mary Baker Eddy, my favorite theologian thinker writes: "To be every whit whole, man must be better spiritually as well as physically."

Do all who work to help the sick get well have this important duality of wholeness in mind? I don't think so. Too often the mental and spiritual world are seen as two entirely independent spheres or realms of activity.

In considering wholeness it's needful to contemplate: What makes you feel whole?

Healthy friendships? Good relationships? Living an honest life? Feeling true to yourself? Feeling valued, appreciated and purposeful? Feeling loved? Don't all these things make you feel good inside and outside too?

Mary Baker Eddy wrote of medicine's historical advancements:  "Hippocrates turned from image-gods to vegetable and mineral drugs for healing. This was deemed progress in medicine; but what we need is the truth which heals both mind and body." (emphasis added)

Will material medicine ever reach the pinnacle of power to be able to remove all liability to be ill? According to Christian Science: never.  Not that people won't try, or that their efforts aren't noble and praiseworthy. But it's been demonstrated thousands of times over the last hundred and thirty years in the practice of Christian Science healing that illness of the body- to be permanently removed- needs to be healed at its source or origin: which is always in the mind or consciousness of the patient.

Healing the sick through spiritually based, God-centered prayer is an intrinsic part of Christian Science theology. Sometimes family or friends don't get why a student of these teachings is not merely seeking healing of a physical ailment when they are praying for an apparent physical health challenge. 'Why not just take medicine and be done with it" some might say- especially since medicine has proven to have a relatively reliable track record with certain ailments (though many create equally troublesome side-effects).

But for this student it's my own thoughts and concepts of myself as God's- divine Love's- creation- that are at the root of the challenge.

Would anyone take their car to the garage and merely silence the trouble-light indicator and drive off satisfied?  Or would they rather actually fix the problem that triggered the warning light in the first place? That's how I see my body. If something is wrong- by body is my dashboard telling me that my thinking has become unaligned with God, good.

When I look back at my own Christian Science healings- which are many- it's not so much the repaired matter-body that comes to mind. It's the Christ-thoughts that brought the healings in the first place- like light replacing darkness.

What I value most are the Christ thoughts that arrived like angels -mentally- that erased the disease-causing misconceptions of myself. I see moral improvements, fears overcome, increased faith and reliance on Spirit for my sustenance, growth in humility and order, as well as the resultant plantar warts and illnesses vanishing, or the damaged ligaments healing incredibly fast, or the infection clearing up, or the nausea or cancerous growths disappearing. And the list goes on.

(photo credit: Walter [flikr]  DSC 3953 pp; https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/)