What does a Christian Science Practitioner do?
                             By William C. Breen
Copied from The Christian Science Journal of March, 1985, p. 190

  Because of her deep love for mankind, Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer of Christian Science, pioneered the work of the Christian Science practitioner. A practitioner is one who heals through Christian love and scientific understanding. Everything needed to perform this work can be found in the Bible and in the writings of Mrs. Eddy.
          A practitioner needs to constantly examine himself and his practice to maintain the high standard that God requires. In my recent self-examination, these are some of the areas of the practice that I considered: A practitioner, what he is, and what he isn’t; what he does do, and what he doesn’t do.
          Christ Jesus approved Peter’s recognition “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.”1 Commenting on this passage, Mrs. Eddy writes in Science and Health, “It was now evident to Peter that divine Life, Truth, and Love, and not a human personality, was the healer of the sick and a rock, a firm foundation in the realm of harmony.”2
          Discerning THAT God and not a human personality is the healer is important for the practitioner. It is important in each case that we recognize we are not one personality helping another personality. One question to test ourselves might be, Is there a temptation to probe the patient’s thought personally rather than let divine Mind uncover the error that needs separation from the patient? A practitioner is not a psychologist, nor is he a medical practitioner. He is not, then, giving human counsel or trying to identify a disease of the body in medical terms. Whether the disease appears to be psychological or physical, he continually classifies it as error. He knows the antidote for error is Truth. Humbly following in the footsteps of the Master, Christ Jesus, the practitioner realizes it is Truth that makes the patient free.
          Because the practitioner can never hold to a view that man is both God’s spiritual idea and a physicality, he never accepts for a moment that Christian Science treatment can be mingled with medical treatment. A practitioner stands solidly on the truth that man is the spiritual, perfect idea of God.
          If the patient chooses to have medical help, a practitioner never condemns the patient, but he lovingly looses him to learn from experience. A practitioner knows that the only permanent healing for an error of thought rests in an understanding of the specific truths that are the counter fact of this error. Unlike a psychologist, he realizes that the supposititious mortal mind, which is the cause of the problem, could not possibly be the remedy for the condition it has created. Only the truth of divine Mind can bring permanent release from the fear, sin, and diseases of the mortal mind.
          The practitioner must always have the sympathetic, compassionate love for his fellow man that sees the patient already in God’s loving embrace. He knows that this individual is not in a problem trying to climb out. In speaking of zealot who don’t understand how to deal scientifically with iniquity, Mrs. Eddy writes, “Such people say, ‘Would you have me get out of a burning house, or stay in it?’” In the next paragraph she declares, “I would have you already out, and know that you are out....”3
          The practitioner is ever leading the patient to the Christ, God’s healing message, and to the recognition of man’s sonship with God. He encourages the patient to look away from the practitioner’s personality for healing. In Christina Science healing, the patient learns to rely more on the divine Principle, God, and less on any human personality and to divest himself of a personal sense of “my” practitioner.
          In a case of paralysis, for example, the practitioner might declare general healing truths about man---that man is spiritual and perfect. He might also realize specific truths about action, formation, movement, that antidote the paralysis belief. These truths annul error. He might further recognize that these truths are in reality already present and manifested everywhere---even within the consciousness of the one who calls himself a patient. Jesus taught, “The kingdom of God is within you.”4
          The practitioner is not trying to substitute subtly his understanding of God for the patient’s understanding. This would imply the existence of two minds instead of the oneness of Mind, God. Rather, the practitioner knows that God’s Christ is revealing directly the truth of present and eternal perfection, healing specifically whatever seems to need healing.
          The practitioner effectively handles errors of thought by recognizing the counter facts that heal them. For instance, fear and hatred can be healed by knowing that the patient, who is in fact God’s man, is feeling Love’s presence. Doubt can be cast out by knowing the presence of God’s active goodness. Sinful appetites can be removed by8 realizing the completeness of man’s true individuality. Right ideas and right activity are found only int he spiritual realm. The Psalmist sang, “I shall be satisfied, when I awake, with thy likeness.”5 True satisfaction is found in awaking to one’s status as God’s likeness, not in dreaming the misty dream of material sense.
          God’s offspring is never an intermediary to come between God and a patient. But he ministers to the spiritual needs of a patient. The practitioner need not be a savant. He sees himself as a servant, and Christ as Saviour. He, like those whom he would help, is really the loved child of God, who consciously feels his perfect status as God’s reflection. In proportion as the practitioner’s work is the reflection of Mind’s restfulness, he is free from being harried, worried, or burdened by many cases or few cases. He strives to see each individual as God’s whole, free, harmonious idea at all times.
          What motivates one to enter the full-time practice of Christian Science? It is his love for God and his willingness to serve mankind. What maintains his practice? The scientific understanding of God, Christ, and man continuously unfolds. The practitioner’s constant renewal and enlargement of his spiritual understanding by consistent study of the Bible and Mrs. Eddy’s writings---as well as his faithful obedience to the Manual of The Mother Church---maintain his practice.
          It is not the practitioner’s knowledge of material conditions that heals the patient. It is his understanding of the spiritual verities of being that heals.  Mrs. Eddy describes the Christian Science healer in one of her letters to a student: “A real scientific Healer  is the highest position attainable in this sphere of being. Its altitude is far above a Teacher of preacher; it includes all that is divinely high and holy.”6
          Today’s world has a great need for us as scientific spiritual healers.