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. (more…)
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. (more…)
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. (more…)
“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. (more…)
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. (more…)
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. (more…)
One might think that Christian Science is both prominent and permanent, to judge by the religion’s imposing, mega-million-dollar headquarters complex in Boston. Actually, though, it’s neither, as the facts attest. (more…)
A friend of mine, call him Clint, follows Christian Science but struggles with it. He also struggles with biblical Christianity, though—and Jesus in particular. It’s as if he needs to convince himself, and in so doing convince me, that Jesus is not God incarnate, the second person of the Trinity. (more…)
“The Chosen,” by director Dallas Jenkins, is drawing big audiences as the first multi-season TV series about Jesus. The show is extremely well done, and I’ve recommended it to several CS friends, who responded favorably. (more…)
Do you love God? Do you love Jesus? Do you love the Bible? Do you love the Church? Ask these questions of any Christian Scientist, and he will almost certainly answer yes. (more…)
Josh and his family have been friends of ours for over 40 years. When he was a teenager, I taught his class at the Christian Science Sunday School. It’s always been heavy on my heart that when he and other impressionable kids were spiritually in my care, I fed them CS falsehood instead of Bible truth. (more…)
The magical mantra of our times, “It’s science,” echoes endlessly in the public arena these days. Both sides in the debate over climate change use it. Both sides in the fight over how to stem the coronavirus use it. (more…)
In the affair of the golden calf, would I have stood with Moses or with Aaron? The answer should be obvious. Yet it’s not, considering how utterly I was taken in by Christian Science. (more…)
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. (more…)
My friend Hal is a lifelong Christian Scientist who is in the very early stages of questioning the Eddy doctrines and losing patience with some aspects of the CS culture. After reading my new book Discovering a Larger God and commenting favorably on it, Hal asked how I as a Bible Christian would go about praying for several situations that are troubling him at present.
Raised in Christian Science, I experienced a crisis in my thirties when it became clear Mrs. Eddy’s God was not big enough for the desperation engulfing me. Her deity was too small to look upon my ugly sinfulness and love me anyway. (more…)
C. S. Lewis invites us to imagine a man with a lizard attached to, or actually growing out of, his shoulder. Clinging there, it whispers lies in the man’s ear to keep him out of heaven. An angel, seeing that the poor soul is half-willing to be rid of the lizard, asks his permission to kill it. (more…)
I just learned of the untimely death of a prominent, well-loved CS figure in our community. One more sad reminder that Christian Science as we see it lived by devoted individuals across the world, across the generations, simply does not measure up as a reliable approach to health, wellness, and bodily dominion. (more…)
As a convert of Jesus and as someone who seeks to make converts, I have begun reading the four gospels and the book of Acts as a marvelous collection of conversion stories. Think about it. Eleven of the apostles were converts, like the Magi before them. (more…)
“This isn’t working. I’ve been misled, harmed, ill served. I want out. I need to find a better way of life.” Such are the thoughts of someone feeling trapped in an unhealthy belief system or subculture.