What
is “death” according to the teachings of Christian Science?
As we learn
in Christian Science, man is more than what he appears to be
to the
five physical senses. He is not mortal, but has a spiritual
identity.
We can also say of death that it is not what it appears
to be to the physical
senses. Life cannot be destroyed by death,
even though it seems that way
to those experiencing it from a mortal
viewpoint. Death is a mortal belief to
be destroyed by spiritual understanding,
just as sin, sickness, and disease
are. Jesus commanded that
his followers "raise the dead." Christian
Science shows us how
to do that.
The Christian Science textbook, Science and
Health with Key to the
better than can be done in this short space,
but here are a few citations that
touch upon the concept of death.
Each one tackles the beliefs of death
from different angles, and require
careful study to understand.
“After the change called death takes place,
do we meet those gone
before? — or does life continue in thought only
as in a dream?
“Man is not annihilated, nor does he lose his identity,
by passing through
the belief called death. After the momentary belief
of dying passes from
mortal mind, this mind is still in a conscious
state of existence; and the
individual has but passed through a moment
of extreme mortal fear, to
awaken with thoughts, and being, as material
as before. Science and Health
clearly states that spiritualization
of thought is not attained by the death of
the body, but by a conscious
union with God. When we shall have passed
the ordeal called death,
or destroyed this last enemy, and shall have come
upon the same plane
of conscious existence with those gone before, then
we shall be able
to communicate with and to recognize them.
“If, before the change
whereby we meet the dear departed, our life-work
proves to have been
well done, we shall not have to repeat it; but our joys
and means of
advancing will be proportionately increased.
“The difference between
a belief of material existence and the spiritual fact
of Life is, that
the former is a dream and unreal, while the latter is real and
eternal.
Only as we understand God, and learn that good, not evil, lives and
is
immortal, that immortality exists only in spiritual perfection, shall
we drop
our false sense of Life in sin or sense material, and recognize
a better state
of existence.” (Mis. 42)
“DEATH. An illusion, the lie
of life in matter; the unreal and untrue; the
opposite of Life . .
. Matter has no life, hence it has no real existence. Mind is
immortal.
The flesh, warring against Spirit; that which frets itself free from
one belief only to be fettered by another, until every belief of life
where Life
is not yields to eternal Life. Any material evidence of
death is false, for it
contradicts the spiritual facts of being.”
(S&H 584:9-16)
“Matter has no life to lose, and Spirit never dies.
A partnership of mind
with matter would ignore omnipresent and omnipotent
Mind. This shows
that matter did not originate in God, Spirit, and
is not eternal. Therefore
matter is neither substantial, living, nor
intelligent. The starting-point of
divine Science is that God, Spirit,
is All-in-all, and that there is no other
might nor Mind, — that God
is Love, and therefore He is divine Principle.”
(S&H 275:1-9)
“Man in the likeness of God as revealed in Science cannot help being
immortal.
Though the grass seemeth to wither and the flower to fade,
they reappear.
Erase the figures which express number, silence the tones
of music,
give to the worms the body called man, and yet the producing,
governing,
divine Principle lives on, — in the case of man as truly as in
the
case of numbers and of music, — despite the so-called laws of matter,
which define man as mortal. Though the inharmony resulting from
material
sense hides the harmony of Science, inharmony cannot destroy
the divine
Principle of Science. In Science, man's immortality depends
upon that
of God, good, and follows as a necessary consequence of the
immortality
of good.” (S&H 81:17-30)
“The fact that the Christ, or Truth,
overcame and still overcomes death
proves the "king of terrors" to
be but a mortal belief, or error, which
Truth destroys with the spiritual
evidences of Life; and this shows that
what appears to the senses
to be death is but a mortal illusion, for to the
real man and the real
universe there is no death-process.
“The belief that matter has life
results, by the universal law of mortal
mind, in a belief in death.
So man, tree, and flower are supposed to die;
but the fact remains,
that God's universe is spiritual and immortal.
“The spiritual fact
and the material belief of things are contradictions;
but the spiritual
is true, and therefore the material must be untrue. Life is
not in
matter. Therefore it cannot be said to pass out of matter. Matter
and
death are mortal illusions. Spirit and all things spiritual are
the real and
eternal. (S&H 289:14-30)
“Mortal belief says
that death has been occasioned by fright. Fear never
stopped being
and its action. The blood, heart, lungs, brain, etc., have
nothing
to do with Life, God. Every function of the real man is governed by
the divine Mind. The human mind has no power to kill or to cure, and
it has
no control over God's man. The divine Mind that made man maintains
His
own image and likeness. The human mind is opposed to God and must
be
put off, as St. Paul declares. All that really exists is the divine
Mind and its
idea, and in this Mind the entire being is found harmonious
and eternal.
The straight and narrow way is to see and acknowledge
this fact, yield
to this power, and follow the leadings of truth.”
(S&H 151:14-30)
“If you or I should appear to die, we should not
be dead. The seeming
decease, caused by a majority of human beliefs
that man must die, or
produced by mental assassins, does not in the
least disprove Christian
Science; rather does it evidence the truth
of its basic proposition that
mortal thoughts in belief rule the materiality
miscalled life in the body or
in matter. But the forever fact remains
paramount that Life, Truth, and
Love save from sin, disease, and death.
‘When this corruptible shall
have put on incorruption, and this mortal
shall have put on immortality
[divine Science], then shall be brought
to pass the saying that is written,
Death is swallowed up in victory"
(St. Paul).’” (S&H 164:17-29)
While not every student of Christian
Science has been able to prove that death is
unreal by “raising the
dead” as Jesus did, we accept that his resurrection and
ascension
demonstrated that death can be overcome. Our present demon-
strations
should at least consist of what Mrs. Eddy describes as “raising the
dead, — those dead in trespasses and sins, satisfied with the flesh,
resting
on the basis of matter, blind to the possibilities of Spirit
and its correlative
truth.” (S&H 316:29)
That citation tells us
that the healing of the sins of the flesh is chipping away at the
belief in death, and we can have faith that we are working toward
the goal of
destroying the “last enemy” of death. That said, there
are accounts of Christian
Scientists, including Mrs. Eddy, having
brought people back from death’s door,
and perhaps a few steps beyond.
Even though today's Christian Scientists may not be raising the dead
on a
consistent basis at this period in history, the fact that “Life
is immortal” is the
spiritual law that underlies the thousands of
physical healings that have occurred
on a daily worldwide basis over
the past century and more. As mankind grows
spiritually -- both individually
and collectively -- there will be more and more proofs
that death,
including attempts to murder, has no power to rob us of the life that
God has given us, and that He eternally sustains. Already, there have
been
millions of people (according to Gallup Polls and other studies),
who have
experienced
"near deaths" (NDE's), and have reported that
life does indeed
continue after leaving their mortal bodies. The
writer's
mother had such an
experience, which had a great impact on how she
lived her life. She said she
never feared death after being allowed
to make the choice to return in order to
care for her family.
While
many people of various faiths also believe in an afterlife, students
of
Christian Science have added to the
proof that Jesus gave us, through
an
understanding that man’s spiritual identity does not end because
of a material
sense of death by those of us left behind when someone
appears to die. This
truth, or law, can heal the belief of death here
and now, just as it heals sickness
and sin, however modest that proof
may be. Sooner or later, mankind will prove
that God’s kingdom is
come on earth, as it is in heaven.
Does this teaching of Christian
Science -- that death is an illusion -- mean
that we can be indifferent
to impulses to lash out in anger, or even to kill?
After all, some
might argue, we cannot really hurt anyone if matter is unreal!
No,
this is not how Christian Science works. In our human experience,
we must
discipline our thoughts and lives to conform to the laws of
the Bible and the Christian
morals taught by Jesus. We must rebuke
sin in ourselves and others, and we must
pay the penalties for sinful
thoughts and acts until we cease sinning and destroy the
belief in
its pleasures and pains. We must pray to understand the spiritual
facts of
God, Truth. We use the truth about the unreality of sin to
destroy it, not to justify it!
We do not indulge in sin and then claim
it is “unreal,” pretending that we have
nothing to feel guilty about
or be punished for. That is “mental quackery” and not
Christian Science.
Mrs. Eddy comments:
"The evil-doer receives no encouragement
from my declaration that evil
is unreal, when I declare that he must
awake from his belief in this awful
unreality, repent and forsake
it, in order to understand and demonstrate
its unreality. Error uncondemned
is not nullified. We must condemn the
claim of error in every phase
in order to prove it false, therefore unreal."
(Message for 1901 14:30-6)
“The
notion that one is covering iniquity by asserting its nothingness,
is a fault of zealots, who, like Peter, sleep when the Watcher bids
them
watch, and when the hour of trial comes would cut off somebody's
ears.”
