Mark 9:28-29

“When he had entered the house, his disciples asked him privately, ‘Why could we not cast it out?’ He said to them, ‘This kind can come out only through prayer’” (Mark 9:28-29).

Question:

I am somewhat confused. I am a Christian Scientist. I believe in only One Power, and that is God. Yet this passage seems to imply on an evil force that can only be overcome by prayer and fasting. Was it the father’s unbelief? It certainly was not the child’s.

Comment:

I don’t think this passage—or the healing story that precedes it—implies an ‘evil force’ opposite to God. If a defining quality of the Power we call God is omnipotence—and it is—then there cannot be another power—at least not in spiritual Truth. However, we can definitely manifest evil appearances out of our ignorance of our true relationship to the divine. And if we then proceed to believe in the appearances, we endow them with a power they do not have on their own. I think the disciples allowed themselves to be distracted by the vivid and alarming appearances (convulsions, foaming at the mouth, and so on). Healing cannot happen so long as we believe in the ‘reality’ of the illness—whether we describe it as a demon or as a disease. It is through prayer we align ourselves with the flow of the Infinite, which is the Source of all healing. The disciples and the father (I don’t know about the child) are caught up in the appearances; Jesus sees rightly through prayer consciousness, and the healing is the inevitable result.

Blessings!

Rev. Ed