Metaphysical idealism, without this irrelevant and untrue addition, is logically possible. That is, perhaps it is true that the matter I perceive (most of which cannot be proven to exist anyway) would not exist without my own mind or some other mind directly perceiving it, even if it seems to be the other way around. Idealism can actually be found in some religious ideologies that readers may have heard of at least once or twice, such as Christian Science. Christian Science--a genuinely ironic name given that the Bible contradicts its tenets and its adherents would ideally place minimal emphasis on the role of medicine in healing--holds that there is no true external world comprised of matter; this idealism is the foundation from which its ideas about prayer spring up.
According to Christian Science doctrine, prayer is the way to spiritually restore one's mind and cleanse it of the sin that brings disease, the body and the environment the body resides in considered illusions. Sickness itself is not believed to be a physical condition, but a purely mental one, hence why prayer is supposedly the key to the purest form of healing. In actuality, this is the only conclusion consistent with a combination of a pseudo-Christian religion and total metaphysical idealism. The ironic part is that there is nothing Christian about denying the existence of at least some kind of material world. As incredibly difficult as it can be to first pinpoint just how to do so, it is even possible to logically prove the existence of an external world [1]. This means that Christianity could only be true if it is consistent with this fact.
The Bible blatantly teaches that there is an actual world of matter that humans, as creatures with bodies, live in from the very start. This makes metaphysical idealism of the kind insisting there is no material world a heresy on the Christian worldview! Metaphysical idealism of the kind holding that matter is an illusion with no existence beyond mental perceptions is rejected as early as Genesis 1:1. What about some of the other components of Christian science? As Romans 8:18-25 says, it is true that Biblical theology credits sin with a general decay of our bodies that makes physical redemption necessary, which in turn can affect a person's mental life. The difference between a Biblical stance on sickness and that of Christian Science is that not everyone who gets sick contracts the illness as punishment because of a personal sin. Sickness could befall or not befall someone no matter their moral standing.
James 5:13-18 is one instance where the Bible does describe how some prayers could be linked with divine healing. However, this is not the norm when it comes to Biblical prayer. It also does not logically follow that just because prayer is spiritually healthy that whatever material effects of sickness are illusions along with all matter, though pain and exhaustion are still explicitly mental phenomena and could not be illusory even if there was no external world. The perceptions of sickness would still have to exist within one's mind for Christian Science to even be true. Just one contradiction of Biblical theology or one logical error would invalidate Christian Science as a unified system of ideas, and the lone way to prove that matter exists and the Bible's own affirmation of a material world already accomplish this without even getting to the faulty stance on prayer and sickness.
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