Three simple words—but words that often appear difficult to comprehend.
Whether we’re talking about tragic events, illness and disease, mental health issues, losing a job and financial hardships, or relationship problems, those words can and do have power—if based on the teachings of Christian Science—to wipe the slate clean. To change our apparent human history and to free us from the lies of the carnal mind that would try to keep us enslaved to its falsities.
You might be wondering how that could possibly be.
To quote a character from the Seinfeld TV show: “Oh it be. It be!”
You see, error—evil or the carnal mind—is always trying to establish itself in our thought by an association with a supposed beginning of an inharmonious event. Perhaps the onslaught of an illness, the breakup of a marriage, or perhaps the abuse by another individual, for example. It whispers to our thought “Don’t you remember when such and such took place? Don’t you remember what it felt like? How fearful you were? How much pain you were in? How confused you felt or how bitter and angry you were? Etc., etc., etc.!” And it does so in a silent, deceptive guise which imputes itself to be our own thinking, thereby attempting to establish a subjective/objective “reality” to itself.
But this does not make it so. That very association, that very event, never really took place in spiritual reality—in the Kingdom of God—the only reality there is and can ever be. The Bible tells us that God “…is of purer eyes than to behold evil.” (Habakkuk 1) And in referring to God, Mary Baker Eddy wrote:
There is but one primal cause. Therefore there can be no effect from any other cause, and there can be no reality in aught which does not proceed from this great and only cause. Sin, sickness, disease, and death belong not to the Science of being. They are the errors, which presuppose the absence of Truth, Life, or Love. (Science and Health, p. 207)
This is a radical statement. A statement that is in total and defiant opposition to all the lies that matter-based thinking asserts and tries to impose on our thinking. And material thinking can do nothing else other than lie because it is a lie from its supposed start to finish.
Each and every one of us has been nowhere other than in God—in His/Her kingdom. We have always—without exception—been fully and perfectly sustained by Him as His image and likeness. Now, it may seem that we’re separated from the Almighty, but that is all such a belief is—an illusion, a fallacy, a fabrication.
As we begin to spiritually understand this fact, and conscientiously apply it to our thought, we will inevitably see the health-giving, life-sustaining, and beneficial results of doing so.
Mrs. Eddy wrote in her book Retrospection and Introspection (p. 22):
The human history needs to be revised, and the material record expunged.
That human history and that material record are revised and expunged by gaining the understanding that only God creates and He/She only causes good. Any other assertion—no matter how real or dire it may seem to be—is false and has no claim on any of us.
This sacred recognition blesses us and all whom our thoughts rest upon. It frees us and others from the shackles of mortal mind into the tangible awareness of our existence as the children of God. Into the freedom that is inherently and always ours.
Into the understanding and experience that indeed it—evil–never happened!
Vistas 
I really appreciate this blog, Ken. Thank you. In connection with the idea that we are solely the offspring of Spirit and thus have always existed in Spirit — our eternal dwelling place — the concept of a material history is necessarily an entirely inaccurate depiction of our wholly spiritual, eternal and perfect identity. A profound statement in Science Health, p. 547, usually referenced in terms of the mistaken view that the universe is material instead of spiritual clearly speaks about the true theory of individual man as well: “The true theory of the universe, including man, is not in material history but in spiritual development.” So, to get very specific, I say, ‘the true and only theory about my being, identity and expression is that I am developing and growing spiritually.” This helps me see that whenever or wherever an untoward experience seems to have occurred “in the past,” what was really taking place was an expanding understanding of the way in which God was present to either lift me out of that situation or push me forward. The true activity was really spiritual development in thought and therefore, progress in experience. We can revise our past by recognizing right when something difficult seems to have taken place, right then the sole activity taking place was divine Love revealing to us our safety, security and eternal well-being.
Thank you, Lori, for your thoughts and how you’ve seen Love’s unfoldment and protection for you! 🙂
I’m thankful for the healing effect the words “It never happened” had on me whenever I experienced common chlldhood injuries.
Thank you, so much, Arianne, for sharing how those words helped you as a child. And, I hope they still do! 🙂
Excellent posting Ken, thank you for addressing so difficult a subject. It brought to mind two articles that explain this concept even further and perhaps even more clearly. The first is the Sentinel article: Justification; and the second is also from the Sentinel: Father What is Forgiveness?. Both discuss tragedy overcome by building on what you are teaching us here. The following passage references a healing that took place in the life of a Civil War veteran who turned to Christian Science to heal a wound he received in the war. Ultimately, he had to embrace the absolute truth, that the Civil War never happened, and when he did this, he experienced his healing. This is further explained here is a passage from Justification:
“A number of years ago, a Christian Science practitioner had as a patient a civil war veteran, who was suffering from a wound received in the war. The case not yielding to treatment, Mrs. Eddy was asked what she thought the error could be that prevented the healing; she replied in effect, that the practitioner as well as the patient believed there had once been a war, and regarded it as a link in the man’s history. How many of us have freed our thought entirely from the belief that error, evil, has had a history? We are told that Christ came to destroy the works of the devil, and in order to demonstrate the truth for ourselves and others, it is absolutely necessary that thought be relieved from this incubus, this belief in a material past, for so long as it remains we are yielding assent to error’s claim that we possess a life separate from God.
If Life is God, as the Bible and Christian Science teaches, then belief in existence apart from God is an illusion, is not real and never has been real; it is the Adam-dream to be overcome, proved unreal, in the way that Jesus showed us,…”
And here are the full links:
http://sentinel.christianscience.com/issues/2011/9/113-39/father-what-is-forgiveness
http://sentinel.christianscience.com/issues/1913/5/15-36/justification
Hi Leah,
Thanks so much. And thanks for including those selections from the two Sentinel articles–both of which I’m familiar with and are indeed important. 🙂
Thank you, Ken. Hard concepts to grasp; but, the Truth is always the Truth.
I also found this: “It may be that the mortal life-battle still wages, and must continue till its involved errors are vanquished by victory-bringing Science; but this triumph will come! God is over all. He alone is our origin, aim, and being” (Ret 22).
Clinging to the Truth, as we pray and practice to understand the hard concepts and continue to grow spiritually, we are strengthened by our Way Shower. “Jesus demonstrated the power of Christian Science to heal mortal minds and bodies” (S&H 110)
And thank you, Nela, for your comments and citations! 🙂