The Science of Being Well by Wallace D. Wattles applies his familiar philosophy of thought, faith, and deliberate action to physical health. Wattles argues that the body contains an inherent tendency toward life and restoration, and that thought, expectation, gratitude, food, breathing, sleep, and daily behavior should cooperate with that tendency rather than continually work against it.
Scripture gives us good reason to take faith, peace, thought, gratitude, stewardship of the body, and prayer for healing seriously. Yet Wattles also makes sweeping claims that go beyond what the Bible establishes, particularly when sickness is treated as something that can always be overcome through correct thinking. The King James Bible permits strong faith for healing without turning illness into automatic proof of defective thought or making mental technique more important than Christ.
Listen to The Science of Being Well
Wallace D. Wattles • Complete audiobook
The Principle of Health
Wattles begins with the conviction that life possesses an organizing and restorative principle. The body is not merely a dead machine. It continually repairs tissue, replaces cells, responds to injury, processes nourishment, regulates temperature, and performs countless functions without conscious command.
Scripture also treats life as something received from God rather than independently manufactured by the body.
This gives Wattles's intuition a biblical center. Life is not self-originating. Whatever natural restorative capacity exists within the body ultimately belongs inside the larger reality of life received from God.
The Body Is Not the Enemy
Some religious thinking treats the physical body as though spirituality requires neglecting it. Scripture does not. The body is capable of becoming an instrument through which the life of Christ is expressed.
Stewarding the body therefore need not compete with spiritual life. Eating wisely, sleeping, breathing, moving, resting, seeking treatment when necessary, and paying attention to physical needs can all belong to responsible stewardship.
The Foundation of Faith
Wattles makes faith central to health. He argues that someone continually expecting deterioration reinforces a radically different inward state from someone expecting restoration. Whatever conclusions we draw about the physical effects of expectation, Scripture unquestionably places faith in direct relationship with healing.
Jesus does not treat faith as irrelevant. In several healing accounts He explicitly acknowledges it.
Faith Must Remain Faith in God
Wattles describes a universal Principle of Life that can sound more like an impersonal spiritual mechanism than the Father revealed by Christ. Scripture gives faith a more definite object.
The believer does not need to decide whether enough mental force has been generated to activate an impersonal law. Faith can remain relationship with God.
Prayer for Healing Can Be Direct
Scripture does not require believers to weaken prayer for healing until it means little more than accepting whatever happens. James gives explicit instruction concerning the sick.
Healing therefore belongs legitimately inside biblical prayer. Faith can ask boldly without pretending that sickness is spiritually desirable.
What to Think
Wattles teaches the reader to stop continually picturing himself through disease and weakness and instead form a conception of health, strength, and normal functioning. The larger principle is that identity and attention influence how a person approaches the body.
Scripture likewise directs thought deliberately.
Attention is a form of stewardship. Constantly feeding fear is different from accurately acknowledging a condition and then directing the mind toward faith, wisdom, healing, and appropriate action.
Do Not Turn a Diagnosis Into Identity
A physical condition can be real without becoming the deepest definition of the person experiencing it. “I presently have this condition” is different from allowing the condition to absorb the whole identity.
Scripture gives the believer an identity deeper than physical circumstances.
The new creature may still be dealing with physical weakness while refusing to let weakness become the final answer to the question, “Who am I?”
Thought Can Serve Healing Without Becoming God
Wattles places enormous causal authority upon thought. A more careful biblical reading preserves the importance of thought while refusing to make every bodily process a direct creation of conscious belief.
Thought influences choices. Fear can affect sleep, appetite, relationships, adherence to treatment, willingness to exercise, and whether someone seeks help. Faith can influence courage, persistence, hope, and action. But Scripture never teaches that every sickness proves the sufferer generated it through wrong thinking.
Jesus Rejects Automatic Blame
When the disciples encounter a man born blind, they immediately search for personal blame.
Jesus refuses their assumed explanation.
The passage should make us extremely cautious about turning sickness into accusation.
Sick Does Not Mean Faithless
The New Testament itself records faithful believers experiencing illness. Paul tells Timothy about his stomach and frequent infirmities, and another companion is simply described as sick.
The sentence is remarkably ordinary. Paul does not conclude that Trophimus had failed to think correctly enough, lacked a proper mental image, or had abandoned God.
Healing Without Condemnation
This gives a much safer biblical structure. Believe strongly for healing. Pray. Receive treatment. Steward the body. Rest. Change harmful habits where necessary. Expect good.
But do not turn the absence of immediate healing into evidence that the person has spiritually failed.
The Use of the Will
Wattles places considerable emphasis upon will, but his best point is not that willpower should force the body to become healthy. It is that attention can be deliberately redirected. A person does not have to follow every fearful thought merely because it appears.
Scripture describes something similar.
Captivity implies government. The appearance of a thought is not the same thing as agreement with it.
Do Not Become Afraid of Your Mind
Health teachings centered on thought can create another problem: fear of negative thinking. Someone feels pain and immediately becomes frightened that noticing the pain will strengthen it. An anxious thought appears and anxiety doubles because the person now fears the thought itself.
That is not freedom. Faith should not become another mental law under which every imperfect thought creates condemnation.
David can acknowledge fear and choose trust in the same verse.
Health From God
One of Wattles's chapter titles gives us the clearest biblical direction for the whole subject: health from God. Whatever usefulness exists in thought, nutrition, sleep, breathing, treatment, exercise, or other physical means, none of those things need to become the ultimate source.
Means can matter while God remains the fountain.
The Means and the Source Are Not Enemies
Scripture does not require choosing between prayer and ordinary means. Paul gives Timothy practical advice concerning his physical condition rather than treating practical care as unbelief.
Prayer, faith, practical care, medical treatment, rest, nutrition, and wise physical habits do not have to compete. A medicine can be a means without becoming God, just as food can be a means of provision without becoming the ultimate source of life.
Eating as Stewardship
Wattles devotes several chapters to when, what, and how to eat. Some of his specific recommendations belong to his own era and should not be treated as timeless medical rules. The broader principle of attentive stewardship remains useful.
Scripture rejects both worship of appetite and unnecessary condemnation of food.
Even ordinary eating can belong inside a life ordered toward God.
The Body Gives Information
Wattles asks readers to pay attention to genuine hunger rather than continually eating through habit or artificial rules. Whatever nutritional system someone follows, the principle of learning to notice the body's signals has practical value.
Stewardship requires attention. Ignoring the body completely is no more spiritual than becoming obsessed with it.
Breathing
Wattles also emphasizes breathing and fresh air. Breath carries an especially rich biblical symbolism because Scripture repeatedly connects breath with life.
Ordinary breathing does not become a magical spiritual technique, but it can remind us that life is continually being received rather than independently possessed.
Sleep and Trust
Sleep is one of the clearest daily demonstrations that human beings are not sustaining themselves by conscious effort. Every night the person releases direct control over the world for hours, yet life continues.
Scripture connects sleep with trust.
Rest can therefore become more than physical inactivity. It can become a practical confession that the self is not the ultimate source holding creation together.
Anxiety and the Body
Wattles repeatedly wants the reader to stop mentally identifying with disease. Scripture similarly refuses to let anxiety rule consciousness, but it gives anxiety somewhere to go.
Fear moves toward prayer. The need is named. Thanksgiving redirects attention toward the Giver.
Peace Can Come Before the Body Changes
The verse does not say every external condition must first be resolved before peace becomes possible. Peace can become part of the inward environment from which the next step is taken.
Faith for Healing Should Remain Bold
Correcting Wattles's overstatements does not require becoming timid about healing. Jesus heals repeatedly, and His ministry includes direct authority over sickness.
Healing is not foreign to Christ. The believer can ask confidently without needing to explain every unanswered question before praying.
Believe That You Receive
A desire for health can be brought into prayer just as other desires can. Believing that one receives allows faith to move before visible completion.
But the promise remains inside the relationship Jesus established: “Have faith in God.”
The Mirror Principle and Health
Physical difficulty can reveal inward patterns without proving that those patterns caused the illness. Pain may expose fear. A health scare may reveal how completely identity had been attached to physical strength. Recovery may expose impatience with gradual processes.
That question produces useful information without accusing the sufferer of creating the condition.
The New Creature Is More Than the Body
Physical health is valuable, but the body cannot become the final source of identity. Otherwise every physical change threatens the self at its deepest level.
Life is hidden with Christ. This allows the body to be loved and stewarded without becoming the entire definition of the person.
Christ Is the Life
Wattles speaks of a universal Principle of Life. Scripture gives that life a much more definite center. Christ is not merely a principle to be activated through correct thinking. He is the believer's life.
The Vine and the Branch
This provides a better model than self-generated health. The branch genuinely participates in life, but that life comes through the Vine.
Faith receives.
The believer stewards the body.
Wisdom guides practical action.
Healing can be sought without condemnation.
A Biblical Practice Inspired by The Science of Being Well
Refuse to make sickness your identity.
A condition can be real without becoming the deepest definition of who you are in Christ.
Bring healing directly to God.
Ask plainly and allow faith to expect good.
Govern imagination without fearing it.
Do not spend unnecessary hours rehearsing catastrophe, but do not condemn yourself when fear appears.
Receive appropriate help.
Prayer and competent medical care do not need to become enemies.
Steward the body.
Give appropriate attention to food, movement, breathing, rest, sleep, and other practical needs.
Use gratitude.
Notice what the body is already doing rather than allowing attention to become completely occupied by what feels wrong.
Reject condemnation.
Sickness is not automatic evidence that you failed spiritually.
Keep Christ as the source.
Health practices can assist the body without replacing the One in whom life itself is found.
Reading Wallace D. Wattles Through Scripture
The Science of Being Well is strongest when it reminds readers that thought, faith, expectation, gratitude, sleep, eating, breathing, and daily habits should not be treated as unrelated to physical life. Human beings participate in the stewardship of their bodies, and fear does not deserve unlimited authority over imagination.
Wattles goes too far when his system becomes universal enough to imply that correct thought can invariably overcome disease. Scripture permits stronger nuance. Faith participates in healing, yet faithful believers can still become sick. Jesus heals without condemning the sufferer, and practical means can coexist with prayer.
The biblical center is therefore neither helpless fatalism nor mental omnipotence. God gives life. Christ remains the Vine. Faith receives, wisdom acts, the body is stewarded, and healing can be sought boldly without making the sick person carry the additional burden of condemnation.
The Central Principle
Being well is more than repeating thoughts of health. It involves the whole person: faith, identity, thought, practical stewardship, rest, action, wisdom, and relationship with God. The inward life matters, but it does not become the only cause operating within the body.
Pray for healing. Believe beyond present appearances. Refuse to make illness your identity. Give the body wise care and receive appropriate help without treating ordinary means as unbelief. Let fear be corrected without becoming condemnation.
Health is good. Life is good. Healing is worth asking for. But the deepest security remains greater than the condition of the body: Christ is our life, and nothing about bodily weakness requires the believer to surrender the identity already given in Him.