began advertising in the Journal as a Christian Science practitioner in 1972 and became a Christian Science teacher 12 years later. He has contributed over 70 articles to the Christian Science periodicals, including writing a monthly column from May 1999 to April 2001 for the Christian Science Sentinel. Bob lives with his wife, Betty, in a one-and-a-half-story ranch house on a wooded lot in Naperville, Illinois, a fast-growing suburb about 30 miles west of Chicago. "Some of our friends call our lot 'The Johnson Arboretum.' We probably have 50 trees on this lot, 20 different varieties." Asked what his interests are in a recent conversation with the Journal's , Bob said, without missing a beat, "Healing people."
Mary Baker Eddy says in Science and Health that before she discovered Christian Science "her own prayers failed to heal her as did the prayers of her devout parents and the church." Science and Health, p. 351. What makes prayer successful?
That can be answered in one word: Love. The successful healer sees both himself and his patient as embraced by, enveloped in, and surrounded by divine Love, which is synonymous with God.
A spiritual sense of what the Bible teaches is basic to successful prayer. A good knowledge of the Scriptures, especially the teachings of the New Testament, along with a regular study of Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures will improve anyone's ability to heal.
Someone who reads Science and Health thoughtfully from cover to cover, and then reads it again and again, will find their prayers much more effective, and their burdens eased. What is needed, and what seems hardest of all, is to let what you learn change the way you think. As you do that you can't help but get a more spiritual sense of things. And that is the point of it all—to see Spirit as the real and matter as the unreal.
Mrs. Eddy emphasizes the great rewards that come from changing your thinking in this regard. She writes in Science and Health: "Become conscious for a single moment that Life and intelligence are purely spiritual,—neither in nor of matter,—and the body will then utter no complaints. If suffering from a belief in sickness, you will find yourself suddenly well. Sorrow is turned into joy when the body is controlled by spiritual Life, Truth, and Love." ibid., p. 14.
That is what it is all about—turning sorrow into joy. Everyone can be joyous all the time—not in a giddy way, but in a spiritual way. Joyous in that God's goodness and healing power always win.
What about people who do what you're saying, or at least try to, but still have a tough time?
They're not alone. Many have found themselves doing good healing work after reading just a chapter or two of Science and Health, but not everyone changes their way of thinking so quickly or easily. Persistence is needed. The writer of James in the Bible taught, "My brethren, count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations; Knowing this, that the trying of your faith worketh patience. But let patience have her perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing. ... he that wavereth is like a wave of the sea driven with the wind and tossed." James 1:2-4, 6.
Note that James talks about joy, too. The change that takes place in your thinking must always be on the side of spirituality—on the side of health, on the side of good—and you need to be confident of the truth of your prayers.
The basis of Christian Science healing is mental treatment. In other words, you don't do anything physical. You pray; you think. What have you learned from your many years of experience that helps make this work effective?
There are as many ways to provide solid mental treatment for a patient as there are individual practitioners, but let me give you what I've found to be a three-step guideline to the kind of prayer that always heals. These steps all come from a single paragraph in Science and Health, near the beginning of a section called, "Mental Treatment Illustrated." Science and Health, pp. 411-412.
The first deals with the fear, which is always a part of illness: "Silently reassure [patients] as to their exemption from disease and danger."
The next element of treatment in this paragraph shows how to eliminate all fear: "The great fact that God lovingly governs all, never punishing aught but sin, is your standpoint, from which to advance and destroy the human fear of sickness."
Last comes the clincher and the most difficult to achieve. It says, "... but be thoroughly persuaded in your own mind concerning the truth which you think or speak, and you will be the victor."
The more convinced you become of the truth you think and speak the better you will be at healing. Of course these three steps are not all there is to healing, but they can be a good place to start.
This may sound like an odd question, but for people who haven't ever experienced it, what does spiritual healing feel like?
I have never felt any kind of euphoria, just a quiet gratitude that comes from knowing I am free of the illness. After all, being well is natural. Sickness or injury is not natural.
There was a time in my life before I began reading Science and Health when I was having back problems. My back would tighten, and soon I wouldn't be able to stand up without great pain. I would call an osteopath who rubbed and manipulated my back. Then he would tell me to stay in bed for a week. This happened three or four times.
Well, one day my back tightened again. But this time I thought about a couple of passages from Science and Health that told me to rise. "Rise in the conscious strength of the spirit of Truth to overthrow the plea of mortal mind ...." "Rise in the strength of Spirit to resist all that is unlike good. God has made man capable of this, and nothing can vitiate the ability and power divinely bestowed on man." ibid., pp. 390-391; p. 393.
I immediately saw that I could rise. I didn't need to go to bed to be healed. I got up and went about my business without a second thought about a bad back. There was no special feeling. Because I believed what I was reading, I didn't need an emotional high. After all, healing was natural, not miraculous. And it was permanent. I was grateful, but it was a quiet gratitude.
It was much the same when I quit smoking. I had smoked for more than 13 years and had tried to stop many times without success. But when my healing came, it came quietly and naturally. I had worked long and hard at understanding the truths that would free me from this bondage, without success. But when the healing came there was no special giddiness—just a quiet gratitude to God. I even kept a pipe in the car for a couple of months, just in case the healing was not complete, but it was.
Lots of people struggle with things like that, bad habits and vices, everything from drug use to sexual immorality. How have you helped people with these kinds of things?
One of the first people who ever called me for help through prayer was a woman who was having an affair with a man. He was going on vacation, and she asked me if Christian Science could help her endure his absence.
I try to be very compassionate with people if they're having a moral issue or any other issue, so I just talked about it with her in terms of the Ten Commandments, what they teach about not committing adultery, and some other points in Jesus' Sermon on the Mount. See Matt., chap. 5. And we let it go at that. We talked more than once, but she never went back to that man. In due time, she left the church she'd been in and joined the Christian Science church. She took class instruction in Christian Science Class instruction is a two-week course on spiritual healing taught by a teacher of Christian Science. and that led to a totally new life.
I think that what got through and caused the healing was that she became aware of the Commandments and wanted to be obedient to them. She was teaching Sunday School in her own church, and she obviously had an interest in the Bible and an appreciation for it, and this seemed to reach her, and she saw it wasn't right to do it anymore.
It sounds like you get calls for help on just about anything.
Yes, and given the economic situation right now, I've been getting a lot of calls about financial problems. And what I find is that Jesus' Sermon on the Mount and Science and Health help remind people of how valuable they are and how to be better employees. Part of my healing effort on their behalf is to assure them that God has a plan for them. And if they just trust God, they'll have an answer.
But I think the pathway to that answer is different for every individual. Let me tell you about my experience, which I wrote about in the Journal in an article called, "Unselfish prayer." Journal, June 1998, pp. 36-37. I left my family's printing business, where I had a good job, good pay, prestige and all that stuff people think is important. I moved to a new town where I had none of that. I was just a brand-new kid in town.
I started law school, but after a few weeks I saw it wasn't for me. I had two kids, in first and third grade, by then, so I tried to sell life insurance, and that was a terrible failure. I got into real estate and went more than four years without a lot of progress on the financial side. I had been praying about this, but without much success.
The time came when I decided to totally put aside my concern about unpaid bills and pray for my church. I love the whole idea of church, and it felt right to do that, but I didn't do it with the thought that it would solve my financial problems. I did it simply because I love church. So I locked my real estate office door and spent three weeks or more praying with these few words from the definition of Church in Science and Health, "Church. The structure of Truth and Love ...." Science and Health, p. 583. I thought about Truth and Love being capitalized, and that therefore God was the structure the definition was talking about. There is nothing outside of God's universe, and everything inside is in full harmony with Truth; no white lies, no dishonesties, and so forth. Inside the structure of Love there could be no dislikes, no hates, no liking one more than another.
Though I'd given no thought to the business during that time, four new real estate listings came without solicitation. I realized that the unselfish praying I had been doing for church healed my business. For the next 22 months I listed a shade better than one property a week. I went from zero to one of the more active offices in town with that unselfish prayer.
That was my personal path to healing, to spiritual growth. Healings are individual. They can't be categorized. But you bring yourself closer to God. And when you do, all sorts of good things can happen.
So the common denominator for any spiritual journey to healing is the yearning to get closer to God.
Closer to God and obedient to Him. To me, this statement in Science and Health is so important: "Honesty is spiritual power. Dishonesty is human weakness, which forfeits divine help." ibid., p. 453. If you read that whole paragraph, you find that the reader should be honest with himself and where he is. Not just honesty in business dealings, but honest with yourself about how closely you're following God.
How would you characterize your work, your life, as a metaphysical healer?
Every day I think I am living something like the life of George Bailey in Frank Capra's movie, It's a Wonderful Life. I see proof of God's love and care for people every day. I see people healed, and I feel healing every day. As I come closer to God, and see others do the same, I see God as our provider of the only dependable social security, financial security, and health security.
It's a wonderful life! And this same wonderful life is available to everyone.
