It’s been often asserted by advocates of pharmaceutical remedies that God made pills for the benefit of humans. It’s an interesting scenario to consider, for when a person takes a pill and experiences relief, it’s hard to argue that something good didn’t happen for them. And if a person believes all good comes from God, he or she might be quick to attribute the good effect to God.
However, Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer of Christian Science, gained some significant insight into reality that sheds a different light on pills and the effect they apparently cause at times. She saw from her study of Jesus Christ’s teachings, that we live in a universe of Spirit, where all is Mind, and not matter; that what mortals call matter is but a finite, limited concept of what exists in Spirit; and to understand reality, one must drop the finite concept and embrace the infinite.
She wrote, “In divine Science, the universe, including man, is spiritual, harmonious, and eternal. Science shows that what is termed matter is but the subjective state of what is termed by the author mortal mind” (Science and Health, p. 114). To understand that the real universe is spiritual, is to see that what is called matter is not of divine Mind, but of mortal mind. Material things are temporal. They are not of divine Mind, but of mortal mind. Pills fall into this category. They are material, and thus any effect from them is temporal too.
Mrs. Eddy learned through her studies, that effects from pills was produced by mortal mind belief. As she explained, “The sick are not healed by inanimate matter or drugs, as they believe that they are. Such seeming medical effect or action is that of so-called mortal mind” (Science and Health, p. 463). She also saw that mortal mind was behind all disease and suffering, and if mortal mind is the source of suffering, how can it be a reliable helper out of suffering! She concluded, that it was not, and was driven solely to divine Mind for help and healing, which is what Jesus Christ taught humanity to do.
Ha ha, I am having a really good giggle here. Your photo of the watermelon is so appropriate. The belief in the power of pills is just “watermelon” and not lamb chop. I am referring to Daniel Jensen’s article: The Illusion of Animal Magnetism where a friend of his hypnotises him whilst they were in a restaurant – he is mesmerized into believing that the lamb chop he ordered is actually a watermelon. This article can be found if you search on the internet.
Wow, Fay! I took the illustration to be comparing watermelon SEEDS to pills! I must further pray on this and investigate!
I haven’t seen that article so I was thinking how people often say “God made the world and everything in it”…meaning physical things such as…WATERMELONS too! And after, all Genesis 1 says this too but in Christian Science, we learn that God, being Spirit, naturally creates spiritual “things” which are not material..so must be ideas (for want of a better word). This is a hard concept to accept, even to ourselves at times but as MBE says, if we accept that God made all the STUFF of this world, then we also end up accepting that He/She also creates destructive forces in nature.
Mary Baker Eddy also says in Miscellaneous Writings, p. 26:5 : “… all is Mind and its manifestation, from the rolling of worlds, in the most subtle ether, to a potato-patch.” … :-). So, isn’t a watermelon the manifestation of Love, of Spirit ?
On page 27 of the same book, she says: “But, say you, is a stone spiritual?”
To erring material sense No! but to unerring spiritual sense, it is a small manifestation of Mind, a type of spiritual substance, “the substance of things hoped for.” ”
As always, a big thank you, Evan, for all your inspiring posts, each day!
I would like to add that I did not intend to say by my comment that I believe that God made pills, rather I wanted to highlight what Evan says in this post: “… (M.B. Eddy) saw from her study of Jesus Christ’s teachings, that we live in a universe of Spirit, where all is Mind, and not matter; that what mortals call matter is but a finite, limited concept of what exists in Spirit; and to understand reality, one must drop the finite concept and embrace the infinite.”
I love Mrs.Eddy’s statement about “from the rolling of the worlds,.. to a potato patch.” And how Béatrice’s puts that together with “… is a stone spiritual?…it is a small manifestation of MInd” … and “the substance of things hoped for”… if those statements are true, then a pill must be the same, “the substance of things hoped for”,
We are looking to know more about reality, and the understanding of health, and healing when there seems to be no health or harmony.
Evan’s statement about how Mrs. Eddy saw that “to understand reality, one must drop the finite concept and embrace the infinite”. is the key here.
A pill, or a drugs, or any other thing used to heal us is using a finite concept, it’s not wrong, it’s just limited. Mrs. Eddy wasn’t against taking in pills or surgery. However, to grow in our spiritual understanding of reality, which was her aim, and to be truly healed of our misconception, we need to take in, (truly understand), the spiritual reality, so deeply, that the problem is seen as nothing, not real. Being not real, not true, it disappears from our consciousness, and only a harmonious situation remains. Pills relieve temporarily, but right understanding corrects the misconception that there was anything wrong in the first place. Spiritual understanding is vastly superior to a pill!
May I just say again that it was never my understanding or my intention to say that a pill is part of God’s creation. A pill has been “created” by mortal man in order to “heal”. As already said: God is Spirit and His creation is spiritual, already complete. We see things as material, limited (as you say also, dear Paula). But when we grow in our spiritual understanding and use spiritual sense, we see that everything is spiritual (be it a stone or a potato-patch, or something else). As MBE says: It is “a type of SPIRITUAL substance” (my emphasis), and THIS spiritual substance is the “substance of things hoped for”. I do not believe that we can have a spiritual view of a pill (according to my present understanding). I love what Jon Ferrell says just below on today’s subject.
I am really sorry if my comment has created a confusion… Sometimes, it is not easy to use words for these things…
.. I would apologize to say one more thing: I just saw that I did not put the quotation marks correctly in the citation of MBE (Mis. p. 27). This is how it should have been said, as the whole passage is a citation :
“But, say you, is a stone spiritual?
To erring material sense No! but to unerring spiritual sense, it is a small manifestation of Mind, a type of spiritual substance, “the substance of things hoped for”. ”
My present understanding is that a “pill” represents the spiritual idea of “the substance of things hoped for” as in health and healing. As we advance in our spiritual understanding, we see that only Christ-healing is real and substantial, flawless. There is nothing that needs to be healed.
Most religions in the world stop short. What they cannot explain they attribute to the mystery of God. I love Christian Science because there is no issue in human experience that is off-limits. Mrs. Eddy writes, “Christian Science goes to the bottom of mental action, …”(SH 104:13)
Pills are a case in point. To attribute them to some form of God‘s provision for man avoids a vital contradiction or confusion. Why did God create sickness or allow it in the first place, and then create a pill to cure it? And if pills are a cure why do they only cure some cases and not all of them? Also why does the same pill in some cases actually injure the patient who takes it? All of these legitimate questions remain a mystery.
Christ Jesus’ example definitively removed the mystery. He proved that God did not send sickness, disease or death. He healed every case without pills medicines or material methods. Then he gave the following instruction to everyone,
Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out devils: freely ye have received, freely give.
(Matt. 10:8)
Interesting to note that more and more folks are seeing the placebo effect….so it is the belief in the pill rather than the material itself that causes the result, as Mrs. Eddy points out.
This is a very enlightening subject. Here is a slightly different take I have on the subject of what God has and hasn’t made. In Science and Health page 283:4 we read,
“Mind is the source of all movement, and there is no inertia to retard or check its perpetual and harmonious action.” My understanding is that the human mind only sees part of this truth and right now the clearest and fastest human concept of movement is flying in a plane. Did God make the plane? No. This is our present concept of Mind’s perfect movement. When I travel am I in the plane? No. I am in Mind which is moving my thought forward. It just appears to me, with my limited view, that I am in a plane moving materially. But it is always Mind doing the moving spiritually. This is a great help because we are always safe when flying if it is understood we are not in the plane but the plane is in us and is actually our highest, present concept of Mind’s movement. Now we are venturing out into space. This is the the human concept of Mind’s limitless movement growing in human thought and manifesting itself as faster, freer travel. As we come into the perfect understanding of Mind’s limitless movement we will experience another truth that ultimately frees us of all concepts of travel as material and we will see that, ” boundless thought walks enraptured, and conception unconfined is winged to reach the divine glory.” (SH 323:6.) and that we have mental wings with no material accompaniments. Love the ride …it’s all in Mind! Thank you Evan for subjects that prod thought forward each day.
I love our SpiritView Sunday School class! Evan, you’ve opened up such wonderful ideas for this delightful discussion. I so appreciate our daily exchange of observations, and look forward each day for new ideas!
Love to each one!☀️
Annie,
I agree! Thank you Evan!
The image of flying reminds me of what S&H says about medicine. Mrs. Eddy said that medicine would become purer and more effective as the yeast of her ideas leavened the world–and it has! Notice how the ideas of mind-body medicine from thinkers such as Larry Dossey and Deepak Chopra are starting to gain ground. In her section on Medicine, she reminds us that Science and doctors are on the same side, and that doctors want the same healing for their patients that Science demonstrates. As doctors learn that Science offers a total cure, the more their methods will resemble Science.
God’s universe lacks for nothing and thus we as his spiritual offspring lack for nothing, too. Spiritual wholeness need no remedy to be whole. Thus it is that we only need to see that fact as the underlying truth of our being to reflect it to others. Thank you, Evan for the thought that a pill cannot make us any more spiritually whole than our original identity.
I suppose we can consider what MBE said about mortal man, It is a counterfeit of the real thing, The real man is spiritual not material, Therefore mortal man or counterfeit man attempts to medicate its counterfeit problem. Neither man, illness or pill has sprung from the real creation. It’s all part of the Adam dream that man is working to awaken out of.
Great thread! Of course God doesn’t make pills. They’re matter. God never has and never will make matter.
And, as others have said, the effect is due to the belief in them. I’ll add, it’s not just one person’s belief – it’s the common belief that we can be helped or hurt by matter. So being alert to that idea is important.
True healing comes from God and God alone, never from matter. Mrs. Eddy also mentions using “temporary means” when necessary – but it’s crucial to understand that they ARE temporary, be they glasses, pills, surgery – even hand lotion or lip balm are temporary means! We all just have to keep seeking our true nature and the true nature of God and the universe, and these temporary means will fall away as we grow in our understanding.
Many thanks to Fay for the watermelon insight! I’ve loved D. Jensen’s article for years, but did not get that!!
The Christian Science watermelon is seedless just as the Christian Science medicine, divine Mind, is pill-less.
God doesn’t make pills–God doesn’t make buildings, books, or symphonies either. Sometimes, we as humans use matter to communicate God’s ideas to our present plane of understanding. Mrs. Eddy knew that spiritual truth was immaterial, but in order to communicate that truth, she wrote a physical, material book. For me, this is the same as a doctor creating a pill in order to communicate God’s spiritual healing power. It is also the point of Jesus becoming flesh–He had to make the reality of God’s spiritual reality available to mortal senses. He allowed Thomas to touch Him because that’s what Thomas needed at that moment for his level of understanding.
For me, taking a pill doesn’t mean I lose access to God’s healing any more than Thomas touching Jesus means he loses access to the Christ. It’s a way to access God’s healing power based on what I’m capable of understanding at the moment. It’s like walking into the beautiful and stately Mother Church–someday, such a building won’t be needed for our uplifting, but for now, the material building helps us.
When I see a pill, I see the spiritual ideas of compassion, intelligence, and the doctor’s skill surrounding God’s healing truth. Someday, like Thomas, I will have direct access to Christ’s healing power, but for now, I thank pills for their promise.
The good news is, you don’t have to live just with promises. You can go directly to the Source and find the Real Thing!
God is with you, loves you, cares for you, empowers you, and gives you everything you need to be healthy and well through the spiritual individuality that is eternally yours. That’s a promise fulfilled!
When do I know I’m ready to give up the promise for the reality? When do I let go of the sunset for the beauty behind the sunset, or the song for the melody behind the song? I feel I’m in that period of time between the Resurrection and the Ascension when Jesus made Himself available to our senses in preparation for the day He would go beyond our senses.
As I’ve said previously, I know that my main motivation for using pills and medicine is fear, and I’m grateful that Christ is compassionate about my fear. I think the fastest way past my fear is loving what’s available to me now and being grateful for it until it slowly disappears, as Mrs. Eddy’s experience with homeopathy showed her it would.
…and I saw bed bugs in the photo. Bed bugs, watermelon seeds, pills…all open for conjecture I suppose-!
Love today’s blog and comments! Swallowing a pill has no more ability to change or improve me than swallowing a watermelon seed would.
Looking forward to reading Daniel Jensen’s article.
Hey John, I saw bugs at first, too – haha! Open for conjecture, indeed.
I was once told this story by a lady in my church. Her father struggled with migraine headaches, which he took pills for. One day she noticed his symptoms as he took what he thought were 2 pills and went off to his room. He appeared sooner than normal, feeling well and began to search for something and asked her mother if she had seen the two little buttons he needed sewn on his shirt …. it turned out he had taken the buttons, thinking they were his pills. Soooo was it the buttons he took that healed his headache OR his belief that healed his headache? This shows me it was his belief!!!!
Thank you Evan for all your wonderful thought opening Posts. Grateful for every one❤️
Happy Tuesday SpiritView friends.
caydee
Yes, thank you Evan ….and for you all who comment and share!!!! I love that we are discussing.medicine and healing. So needed!!!
Karen, l love your quote today of ” boundless thought walks enraptured, and conception unconfined is winged to reach the divine glory.”
(SH 323:6.) and that we have mental wings with no material accompaniments. It helps my current expanding thought for a new beginning, including daily walking my dog and I will take this quote and idea along with us today and beyond. Knowing it can bring insight, direction, healing and progress.
Many thanks to all who contribute in every way.
So glad P Cartwright!
Thank you all, Evan for Spirit View and for all the contributors especially today for the link to the article on animal magnetism, I didn’t know where to find it. Friends couldn’t understand why I wouldn’t join them in a show at the fair with a hypnotist, It seemed the person being hypnotized was being laughed at and made to look like a fool. It’s true medicine can have that effect though their desire is to help not ridicule, Mrs Eddy says we should love them all.
Thank you all for your comments. CayDee your comment about your dad and the buttons vs pills reminded me of a similar incident 65 years ago. Daddy (75 at the time) said he could not get to sleep for a long time if he drank regular coffee and not decaf. My girlfriend (not CS) and I thought it was all in his head so she brought coffee from home and gave “poppa” his coffee (only regular, not decaf) for the night. The next day she asked if he had a good night’s sleep. He said as usual he went to sleep right away and slept like a baby – one that sleeps all night!!
Thanks to all. I, too, love these posts and the sharing of ideas. Thanks, Evan, for providing this! And I would add, too, that Daniel Jensen’s paper was very helpful to me years ago when I was confronted with the claim of pain.
So grateful for everyone’s comments and questions! I’d just like to add that I think it’s important to remember that Big Pharma is trying to hypnotize us into believing that sickness is real so we will buy its pills and add to its profits.
Does Paul or anyone else know if Jensen’s article published in either the CS Sentinel or CS Journal?
Hi Leah,
This is the only article that was ever published in the Journal or Sentinel by Daniel Jensen. Here is the link to it it if you want to read it.
Challenging and Correcting Human Belief
DANIEL L. JENSEN
Click here to view:’ https://sentinel.christianscience.com/shared/view/14eeg53rz10?s=e
Thank you Karen. I love Dan Jensen articles and Beginning Rightly is my favourite of all time, but I had known of the one you mention so am very grateful!
I mean I had not known!
Thank you, Karen.
According to his association web site Daniel Jensen had very little published in CS periodicals. Most of his works were from other sources
Thank you, Paul.
I hear this all the time. God gave us intelligence to do wonderful medical procedures. But I think God meets us where we are. So maybe for some that is the most right at the time. But since we are spiritual we know only Truth heals.
If God made pills He would nor make them with side effects.
Yessss! Thank you Susan Stroud and also Carolyne! Big Pharma is a huge con artist, much like the serpent in the garden of Eden.
And thanks to you all, especially Evan, for your contribution to this subject.