Articles

When I accepted an offer to study abroad at a university in England for my undergraduate education, I was thrilled to know there was a Christian Science church in the university’s city. I attended the church’s Sunday School every week, and quite often I was the only student present.

A little more than two years ago I found myself without a job and mourning the loss of a loved one. During this time I decided to devote myself to reading all of Mary Baker Eddy’s writings to get a clearer idea of God, and man as God’s expression, though the depression was so difficult to cope with that sometimes I just hated even being alive.

I remember my dad asking me one time when I was in middle school: “Do you think there are more stars in the universe, or more grains of sand in all the beaches on Earth?” I had no idea. Having loved astronomy since I was little, I guessed the stars.

As a child attending school I had trouble reading, although an examination showed that my eyes were far better than what is considered normal for good vision. My teachers didn’t know what to do to help me.

Recently, I awakened one bright morning with the first chapter of Genesis vividly in thought. I saw the infinite Creator, God, as Light, or infinite Mind, presenting His infinite universe and beholding all as “very good” (see verse 31 ).

So many times in family, church, and community work when I’ve found myself working with difficult people, I’ve turned to God to show me His vision of the kingdom of heaven at hand (see Matthew 3:2 ).   I realized that in His kingdom each one has a harmonious relationship with every other because the essential nature of each of His children is good.

It has its own energy, its own infinite animation. It stirs and wakes us up—the way light shakes out shrouded shadows.

A divine message from God to humanity requires a messenger to make it appreciable to human consciousness. For example, the demands of Truth, God, were always present, but Moses, God’s chosen messenger, was needed to reveal those demands in the form of the Ten Commandments.

Mary Baker Eddy predicted that the leaven of the Science of Christ would be continuously raising consciousness in three measures of meal: the sciences, medicine, and theology. That was over a century ago! So, when I began lecturing on Christian Science 12 years ago, I started looking for evidence of this leavening and discovered it everywhere—medical schools, hospitals, university classrooms, interfaith and scientific panels on the topic of spiritual healing.

Throughout the polarizing debates in the United States over health-care reform, the arguments have generally focused on how to provide medical treatment to everyone. Little attention has been given to the very nature of contemporary biomedicine—its assumptions, methods, and goals—as being included in what needs to change.