We who sign this letter are acquainted well or a little or not all, as the case may be, with each other and with you the reader. But we and you have in common a background as Christian Scientists.
After much prayer and searching of the Scriptures, we are moved to write you about a transforming experience in our lives that turned us from following Mary Baker Eddy and made us disciples of Jesus Christ.
These pages will probably be difficult reading for you, if you read them at all. But please consider our communication in the same spirit it was written, the spirit of meekness. We seek to “speak the truth in love,” as God requires (Eph. 4:15). We pray you will be moved to action as a result.
Our experience was like that of the treasurer in the eighth chapter of Acts (Acts 8:26-40). Or of John (John 1:40-45). We yearned, as they did, to understand God’s promise of a man who would save the world.
We recognized ourselves as comparable to the warden in Acts 16, devoted and dutiful but guilt-ridden almost to death (Acts 16:25-34). And though fired with godly zeal, like Saul in Acts 9, we were as blind as he was to God’s personal presence in our midst (Acts 9:1-22).
What reached us in this lost condition was just what reached each of them. It was the good news of Jesus, the Word made flesh, the crucified and risen Son of God incarnate.
The road to the cross differed for each of us. But similar for all was a profound rethinking, a starting-over that was at first hesitant and then joyous. It began with facing up to what we honestly knew about ourselves as deeply flawed human beings.
The next step was opening up to what the New Testament actually says the answer is. Through this process we gradually saw that man’s plight is more terrible, but God’s provision more wonderful, than we had ever realized in many years of reading Mrs. Eddy.
We learned that Jesus is alive today, personally involved in our world, powerfully renewing and guiding the lives of those who let him do so. That his mission and destiny, identity and authority are spelled out in the Bible quite differently from what the lesson-sermons portray. That he expects more of a commitment from every person, and desires more of a relationship with each one, than rationalism wants to admit.
What would you do if presented with this biblical evidence of a real and living Jesus, knocking for admission at the door of your heart? What each of us did was give ourselves to him, surrender to him as Savior and Lord, as humbly and completely as we could.
“Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved”
(Acts 16:31)
There came a day when some friend fearlessly and selflessly offered us the simple invitation that believers long ago gave the warden (and the treasurer, and the unseeing Saul): “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved” (Acts 16:31). We accepted and we’ve never been the same. In brotherly concern, like Ananias coming to Saul, we now extend the invitation to you.
Deciding for Christ and choosing a denomination or church are two quite separate decisions. Only the first of those is our subject here. We’re attesting that the reliability of Jesus is absolute. We hope you will find this out as we did. From there on, the reliability of Science and Health and its author is for you to judge.
We just know that it meant the world to us to have our eyes opened to the crucial missing words in the verse just quoted from Acts 16, a verse that Mrs. Eddy for some reason shortens to: “Believe… and thou shalt be saved” (Science and Health 23:29). We don’t think such use of altered quotations reflects well on a Bible textbook.
Please understand, though. We are not writing to attack Christian Science or to condemn its followers. For us to do that would be offensive and insulting. It would amount to a repudiation of our heritage, our parents and families, whole decades of our life stories. That is not the purpose of this letter, and we fervently hope it is not the effect.
Our purpose is simply to answer the question, “What happened to you?” Friends, relatives, and former church associates have asked us that in countless spoken or unspoken ways. Why the change in what we believe, where we worship, how we live? – they wanted to know.
Setting out to improve on Christianity by recasting it as a science? Claiming the Bible’s real meaning is inaccessible unless unlocked by some hitherto unknown key? What folly; yet I devoted the first half of my life to a little well-intentioned band engaged in that very project.
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Thanks for visiting our site. We’d like to be in dialogue with you. Our editor, John Andrews, faithfully practiced Christian Science until he realized one must choose between following Mrs. Eddy and her textbook or following Jesus and his book, the Bible.
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Let’s think about becoming a people who don’t keep score on each other, serving a God who doesn’t keep score on us. Imagine a life of grace and love, acceptance and belonging, unshakable security and soulful serenity, joyous freedom and limitless possibilities.
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Two friends of mine, Ty who is a Christian Scientist and Vi who is a biblical Christian, were sparring over why forgiveness isn’t more prominently emphasized in the teachings of Christian Science. I wrote to Ty, remarking that it seems to me the differing perspectives on forgiveness stem from one’s view of what is or is not real, and thus whether we need a Savior or can save ourselves.
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“I alone have escaped to tell you.” This is the refrain, three times in the first chapter of the Book of Job, when wide-eyed survivors bring the old man ever-grimmer reports from the scene of tragedy. It has become a life verse for me since escaping Christian Science.
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Forgiveness, so crucial in Christianity, receives little attention in the teachings of Christian Science. Why is that, and what are the consequences? The Lord’s Prayer, along with outlining several things we affirm about God and several things we ask God to do, states just one thing that we are to do.
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Individuals who leave Christian Science tend to arrive, after some wandering, either at a commitment to the biblical Christianity from which CS originally departed or—more often, sadly—at an atheistic, agnostic, or self-generated spirituality that blithely disavows God. My heart goes out to these “nones,” as sociologists call them.
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