Citations/Notes from Sunday School Class, April 11, 1999It was asked this morning what basis existed in the Bible for Christian Scientists not using medicine. I hope these references help.
Matt 9:12
12 But when Jesus heard that, he said unto them, They that be whole need not a physician, but they that are sick.
II Chron 16:12,13
12 And Asa in the thirty and ninth year of his reign was diseased in his feet, until his disease was exceeding great: yet in his disease he sought not to the Lord, but to the physicians.
13 And Asa slept with his fathers, and died in the one and fortieth year of his reign.
Job 13:3-8
3 Surely I would speak to the Almighty, and I desire to reason with God.
4 But ye are forgers of lies, ye are all physicians of no value.
5 O that ye would altogether hold your peace! and it should be your wisdom.
6 Hear now my reasoning, and hearken to the pleadings of my lips.
7 Will ye speak wickedly for God? and talk deceitfully for him?
8 Will ye accept his person? will ye contend for God?
Mark 5:25-34
25 And a certain woman, which had an issue of blood twelve years,
26 And had suffered many things of many physicians, and had spent all that she had, and was nothing bettered, but rather grew worse,
27 When she had heard of Jesus, came in the press behind, and touched his garment.
28 For she said, If I may touch but his clothes, I shall be whole.
29 And straightway the fountain of her blood was dried up; and she felt in her body that she was healed of that plague.
30 And Jesus, immediately knowing in himself that virtue had gone out of him, turned him about in the press, and said, Who touched my clothes?
31 And his disciples said unto him, Thou seest the multitude thronging thee, and sayest thou, Who touched me?
32 And he looked round about to see her that had done this thing.
33 But the woman fearing and trembling, knowing what was done in
her, came and fell down before him, and told him all the truth.
34 And he said unto her, Daughter, thy faith hath made thee whole; go in peace, and be whole of thy plague.
S&H 143:5
It is plain that God does not employ drugs or hygiene, nor provide them for human use; else Jesus would have recommended and employed them in his healing. The sick are more deplorably lost than the sinning, if the sick cannot rely on God for help and the sinning can. The divine Mind never called matter medicine, and matter required a material and human belief before it could be considered as medicine.
S&H 185:22
Jesus cast out evil and healed the sick, not only without drugs, but without hypnotism, which is the reverse of ethical and pathological Truth-power.
S&H 157:16
If drugs are part of God's creation, which (according to the narrative in Genesis) He pronounced good, then drugs cannot be poisonous. If He could create drugs intrinsically bad, then they should never be used. If He creates drugs at all and designs them for medical use, why did Jesus not employ them and recommend them for the treatment of disease?
Matter is not self-creative, for it is unintelligent. Erring mortal mind confers the power which the drug seems to possess.
S&H 232:19-22
Jesus never taught that drugs, food, air, and exercise could make a man healthy, or that they could destroy human life; nor did he illustrate these errors by his practice.
S&H 369:14
We never read that Luke or Paul made a reality of disease in order to discover some means of healing it.
Jesus never asked if disease were acute or chronic, and he never recommended attention to laws of health, never gave drugs, never prayed to know if God were willing that a man should live. He understood man, whose Life is God, to be immortal, and knew that man has not two lives, one to be destroyed and the other to be made indestructible.
Mis 25:22-23,27
Jesus' only medicine was omnipotent and omniscient Mind. If God created drugs good, they cannot be harmful; if He could create them otherwise, then they are bad and unfit for man; and if He created drugs for healing the sick, why did not Jesus employ them and recommend them for that purpose?
'01 18:17-19
If God created drugs for medical use, Jesus and his disciples would have used them and named them for that purpose, for he came to do "the will of the Father."
Peo 9:17
We ask and receive not, because we "ask amiss;" even dare to invoke the divine aid of Spirit to heal the sick, and then administer drugs with full confidence in their efficacy, showing our greater faith in matter, despite the authority of Jesus that "ye cannot serve two masters."