A guest post written by Selim Franklin

A few years ago, I was having difficulty handling flu symptoms and called an old friend who was a Christian Science practitioner and teacher. He asked me to search Science and Health, by Mary Baker Eddy, for all mention of harmony and its variants, with special emphasis on the sentence, “Mentally insist that harmony is the fact, and that sickness is a temporal dream.” The first idea I focused on was the phrase “harmony is the fact” and the unusual the before fact. Not a or one of or some other word or phrase, but the. Then I saw the word insist. There were so many more references to help focus my thought, and when I completed this search, I found I was well. But I still had so much to think about on this subject.

It dawned on me that Christianity and Christian Science are very simple. Jesus referred to children and their ability to quickly respond to concepts that took adults much more time to grasp. His two commandments gave us our whole duty: Love God supremely and love our neighbor as ourselves. Of course, for most of us that’s easier said than done. The often-missed requirement of loving ourselves as God loves us so we can then love our neighbor properly is a great stumbling block. But it is imperative for our growth in grace. Years ago when listening to talk radio, a psychiatrist defined someone’s problem as the inability to love oneself spiritually. His suggested remedy was to look in the mirror while shaving or putting on makeup and simply say, “I love you” just as God would say it.

This simplicity is also shown in Genesis 1, “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” and, “God saw every thing that he had made, and behold it was very good.” Jesus’ statement to the woman taken in adultery is also very simple when he said, “go and sin no more.” We don’t know what she did after leaving the Temple, but we can understand the importance of this simple instruction.

Our material concerns and the multitude of society’s material concerns and beliefs take reams of paper and thousands of words to try and answer. On the other hand, the simple statement that God created the heaven and the earth, and behold it was very good – if believed – is the basis of all that Mary Baker Eddy wrote about. Holding on to these simple statements, “God is Love,” “God is good,” “God is All-in all,” enable us to know the whole truth.

Like, “…harmony is the fact.”