Articles

To quiet the clamor of worldly thinking, many people meditate. Others hike in the wilderness or go on a religious retreat.

Have you ever stopped to think about the Christian Science Sunday School and why it is so important? In my position of Sunday School Support Lead for the Church Activities Department of The Mother Church in Boston, Massachusetts, I think about this a lot.   I regularly meet with individual branch Churches of Christ, Scientist, and in almost every meeting about Sunday School, I have asked, “What is a Christian Science Sunday School, really?” During these meetings, people have shared a wide spectrum of wonderful ideas.

How often we find ourselves counting, measuring, and calculating numbers to answer a question, solve a problem, or describe a situation. Numbers permeate so many facets of life, from measuring personal health, to calculating how much time or money we have, to the state of the climate, to name just a few.

Christian Scientists around the world receive the sermon for the Sunday church service ahead of time—a full week in advance! Why is this? To my knowledge, this arrangement is unique among churches. Why did Mary Baker Eddy, the Founder of Christian Science, provide for this? Why not listen to the sermon for the first time on Sunday? Or why not have a Bible Lesson followed by a related sermon with fresh texts?  A study of the Church Manual can help us understand this.

I had been wondering why churches were closing their doors. Then I realized a more productive question to ask is: What attracted people to Christianity and Christian Science in the first place? Specifically, how did Jesus build his global, spiritually prosperous church? What does prosperous mean? According to Webster’s 1828 American Dictionary of the English Language, it means: “Advancing in the pursuit of any thing desirable; making gain or increase; thriving; successful.

A book by a top professor at The Wharton School, the business school at the University of Pennsylvania, identifies some individuals as “givers”—who give without concern for what they may get back—and some as “takers”—who want to receive more than they give and “win” every transaction. The author, Adam Grant, researched which kind of orientation brought more success, both to the individuals and their endeavors.

There’s an expression that “scales fall from someone’s eyes” when they have a revolutionary insight or gain a completely new perspective and understanding. It refers to the Damascus experience of Paul (then known as Saul) when, after he became blind, he was visited by Ananias and, as the Bible describes, “immediately there fell from his eyes as it had been scales: and he received sight forthwith” (see Acts 9:1–18 ).

We learn in Christian Science that God is omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent. And since God is good, we would naturally expect His government to be good—to be fair and just, to express kindness, honesty, incorruptibility.

Sometimes it may feel like a problem we’re facing is incurable—like it’s just not possible to be healed. Yet Christian Science teaches that there is no incurable disease or situation, because “all reality is in God and His creation, harmonious and eternal.

Arriving early one Sunday morning to support prayerfully the service of my local branch Church of Christ, Scientist, I noticed gulls rising, floating, and soaring outside the church edifice as the gentle wind currents actively lifted them.   This reminded me of what my mother had taught me about God when I was a child.