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…)
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…)
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…)
“You need Jesus. More than anything, you need Jesus. Your whole life depends on it, your whole world.” When I came to accept that this was true and began to make all the changes it would require of me, I was an earnest, fourth-generation Christian Scientist in my late 30s. (more…)
What a shock to hear a story about someone coldly defying God, and suddenly realize the story is about me. I have a sense of how King David must have felt when confronted with his murderous selfishness (II Samuel 12:7). (more…)
“Behold, what manner of love.” These words from the Epistle of John are etched on the memory of anyone who spent years attending the Christian Science church. (more…)
Ten of us who serve as elders at my Presbyterian church were stationed around the sanctuary after today’s sermon to pray with anyone who wanted to accept or renew a saving relationship with Jesus Christ. (more…)
“To the Son of God alone faith ought to look; on him it relies; in him it rests and terminates. If it proceed farther, it will disappear, and will no longer be faith, but a delusion.” (more…)
At Christmas when we sing, “O come let us adore him,” who are we talking about? Jesus of Nazareth, God’s Messiah, right? Are we talking about an idea or a concept or a spirit-being (more…)
Up to my mid-thirties I was a Christian Scientist following Mary Baker Eddy instead of Jesus. Then for a dozen years I was a Christian Scientist following Jesus and Mrs. Eddy both. Finally things reached a breaking point, (more…)
Wouldn’t you want the whole Bible, every verse of its truth, every word of its love, and not just parts of it? Wouldn’t you want all of Christ Jesus, Jesus in his fulness (more…)
During many years when I joined other Christian Scientists in promising to “watch, and pray for that Mind to be in us which was also in Christ Jesus,” the full meaning (more…)
Francis Thompson’s classic poem about Jesus in pursuit, “The Hound of Heaven,” came to mind yesterday after talking with Beth about her husband’s almost-there move from Christian Science to the Cross. (more…)
Christmas is beloved to me a season of new birth personally, as well as a celebration of Jesus’ birth. Over the years as a young adult Christian Scientist, raising our kids, teaching Sunday school, active with Adventure Unlimited and Principia, I found it harder and harder (more…)
Sizing Up the Next Generation Fellowship
Lifting up “Jesus Christ, and him crucified,” in the words of I Corinthians 2:2, is unusual for Christian Scientists. But there is a new group in St. Louis who talk more like followers of the cross than Mrs. Eddy’s devotees usually do. What are we to make of them? (more…)