The great Francis Schaeffer coined the term “true truth” to describe that which simply is, always has been, and always will be, whether we like it or not. What a contrast to CS with its variable truth, simultaneously connoting one thing AND its opposite, depending how one looks at it.

Linda Kramer brings this out so well in her book Perfect Peril, using such examples as did Jesus die or not, is mesmerism powerful or not, and so on. CS offers us no true truth, but instead subjective truth, malleable truth, squishy truth, slippery truth.

The ultimate result is solipsistic truth, a performance of one for an audience of one: myself. Ala Bill Clinton, “It depends on what the meaning of ‘is’ is.”

Which is why, as Kramer points out, efforts at dialogue between a Christian and a Christian Scientist usually end up with them just talking past each other. Trying to evangelize a CSer is hopeless unless he or she starts with a degree of intellectual, moral, and spiritual humility–the willingness to admit, “There is a God, and I’m not Him.”

That doesn’t sound like much, but given the truth issues and vocabulary issues that prevail, sadly it is too much for most Eddy-followers.

Note: Schaeffer’s concept of true truth is first presented in his monumental book The God Who Is There, and further developed in He Is There and He Is Not Silent.