After a 21-year career in the United States military, I was undergoing annual VA (Veterans Affairs) medical testing, which was required because I was receiving veterans benefits. During this testing I was diagnosed with a rare form of pancreatic cancer. As a Christian Scientist, I mentally denied this claim as true from the very beginning. Yet the more I denied that it was true, the more evidence was presented to confirm it. It wasn’t enough just to deny the claim; I realized I had to maintain a vigilant reliance on what I had come to understand was the truth about myself as God’s image and likeness.
I held fast to the spiritual fact that God, Spirit, and man, Spirit’s reflection, are one and inseparable; so man could not exist without God, and God could not be manifested without His reflection, man, each one of us. It was crucial for me to hold to this spiritual insight, radically and steadfastly, in order to reject the false claim behind the matter-based diagnosis, to overcome the fear of being separated from God, and to find healing.
Sometimes we have to know the truth vigilantly in order to overcome the stubborn resistance of the carnal, or mortal, mind. A passage in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy explains, “To be immortal, we must forsake the mortal sense of things, turn from the lie of false belief to Truth, and gather the facts of being from the divine Mind” (p. 370). When we are watching our thoughts and praying with an understanding of spiritual truth, we can keep from slipping into complacency or acceptance of discords as realities and heal them instead.
Christ Jesus did not ask for a prognosis or the name of a malady. He did not have a category of “small problems,” nor did he have a category of “bigger, more difficult problems.” Each problem was equally a claim of inharmony—the outward appearance of a supposed separation of man from God, good—and each could be healed. As it says in Science and Health: “Jesus beheld in Science the perfect man, who appeared to him where sinning mortal man appears to mortals. In this perfect man the Saviour saw God’s own likeness, and this correct view of man healed the sick” (pp. 476–477).
After holding fast to the truth, and rejecting matter’s false claim as nothing but an aggressive suggestion of mortal mind, I felt no more fear, and I was sure that the element of discord was removed. While the doctors were discussing surgery, I asked that another scan be taken to prove the cancer was gone.
However, I was surprised when my doctor said the lump was bigger and there was also a spot on my lung. I was so shocked that I was suddenly in great fear. Yet a life full of Christian Science healing left me with no other response than to know I had to go deeper in my spiritual understanding to prove the protection and perfect love of the Christ, the truth of being.
During this time I remember listening to an audio recording explaining that mortal mind is a liar, no matter what it claims, because its claims are mortal and material instead of spiritual. How many times do we believe a lie about our identity being mortal when that lie is repeated so stridently?
Since the lie that I had a serious disease was being repeated vigorously, I knew I had to take an even more radical stand for the truth of my being as spiritual and perfect. I affirmed that I was not an isolated creation with a distant God someplace apart from me. I prayed to understand that God and man are one (inseparable) and perfect, and that I was therefore never for an instant separated from God’s harmony and wholeness. There never was a departure from nor a return to harmony.
I immediately asked a Christian Science practitioner to pray for me and give me Christian Science treatment. The practitioner provided insight into God’s creation of man as free of accidents, disease, and discord. The understanding of God’s creation places one “in the secret place of the most High” (Psalms 91:1)—in the understanding that the divine Mind alone governs.
The next week, military doctors called to schedule meetings for me with cancer specialists. I told them kindly, “No, thank you. I refuse to become a cancer patient.” I wrote an email to the doctors thanking them for their good intentions, but closing the door on further medical solutions.
Nearly the moment I hit “send” on the email, my phone rang. It was one of the doctors, insisting that to refuse treatment was too dangerous. I thanked him for his concern and gently declined his services.
The next day, a cancer surgeon called and said he wanted to tell me something that was hard to explain on the phone. So the day after that call, I went to his office, and the surgeon said that as a pancreatic cancer specialist, he was in a difficult position because he had never seen a case like mine. He then compared the original scan showing a tumor with the second scan four weeks later—the one I had requested be taken. He said that in an attempt to find the same cancer that was clearly in the first scan, a misdiagnosis had been made in reading the second scan. He proceeded to announce that he could find no trace of cancer in the second scan. He added that although he had to respect the initial test that found cancer four weeks previously, if he was forced to perform surgery now, after seeing this second scan, he would not know where to cut!
I remembered the words of my Christian Science teacher, “See? Mortal mind is a liar, every time.”
I am extremely grateful for Christian Science and the many blessings that have resulted from this healing, which has been complete for over three years. One additional result of my deeper consecrated prayer was that it helped me to detect and work to eradicate in myself a tendency toward anger concerning the supposed annoyances of daily life. I am especially grateful that my wife, who is new to this country and Christian Science, saw this healing firsthand. Raised by parents who are both doctors in an eastern European country, she witnessed the power and truth of Christian Science. I have found that nothing is impossible to God.