“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…)
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…)
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…)
Life is unfair. Bad things happen to good people. Prayer may receive answers we can’t make sense of. Suffering isn’t always explicable. The world is broken. To know all this, and still have faith that God loves us lavishly, is spiritual maturity. (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…)
How did Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection utterly transform human experience and change the world forever? By convincing a few dozen of his followers, who then convinced billions down the centuries and around the world, that Jesus was God incarnate and that through his blood believers could enter into eternal life. (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…)
We have a friend who is a very devout Christian Scientist, getting into the practice. Sometimes along with her metaphysical vocabulary she uses a more biblical or traditional phrasing about “trusting the Father” or “listening to the Father,” that kind of thing. Then it’s back to Mrs. Eddy’s synonyms for God—Principle, Mind, Soul, etc. (more…)
“What shall I do with Jesus who is called Christ?” asks Pilate in Matthew 27:22. I decided many years ago, after half a lifetime in Christian Science, that my own answer to that question must be to acclaim Jesus as Savior and Lord and thus to place him on the throne of my heart. (more…)
“Do you ever get to church?” I’m talking with Chip, a young guy in his late 20s, son of a Christian Science family I’ve known forever. No, he says, he never does, since having decided several years ago CS is not for him — but lately he has felt there’s something spiritually missing in his life, maybe it’s time to look around.
Recently a friend asked me to attend her Christian Science church service. The Bible lesson was on “Doctrine of Atonement.” Twice a year for forty years, prior to leaving Science, (more…)
My car, probably like yours, came with an owner’s manual, including a warranty on the first page. But frustratingly, the book does not answer a lot of obvious questions. Nor does the warranty cover everything. And it expired years ago anyway.
For my life, on the other hand, for the person I am, there is a manual that does have all the answers. The God who made me and owns me has spelled out complete “user instructions” in his written Word, the Bible.
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Mary Baker Eddy invites us to put her and her book to the test, “and so ascertain if the author has given you the correct interpretation of Scripture” (Science and Health, 547:7). We should do just that, with our eyes wide open to the divergence (more…)
My mother was a devout Christian Scientist as were my grandparents on both sides. My father tacitly endorsed the CS line but was more consumed by material success than spiritual journeys. They would drop my brothers and me off (more…)
Do you have a lifetime theme verse from the Bible? Reflecting on this is a way of seeing into your spiritual autobiography, the arc of what God is doing with your life story. Our pastor recently asked about mine, and I realized (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…)
“I was free born.” With these words in Acts 22:28, the Apostle Paul is making a purely political point. He is comparing notes with the centurion, a naturalized Roman, on how the two obtained their citizenship. (more…)