Opening the doors to a new/old Christianity

My grandparents often used to walk past a Church of Christ, Scientist, in their neighborhood, but never went in. That is, until my grandfather was healed through Christian Science of severe head injuries. His great need of healing, an inspired article he read in an issue of the Christian Science Sentinel, and meeting a helpful Christian Scientist came together at just the right time. He was incredibly grateful to experience this healing, and the whole family to witness it.

My grandfather started going to that church, and he took up the study of Christian Science, learning more about how he had been healed. He drank in a new perspective of his God-given spiritual nature and understood the omnipotence of God as Love in new and fresh ways.

Like many people new to the study and practice of Christian Science, my grandfather realized that the statement, “with God all things are possible” (Matthew 19:26), is a practical, provable promise. But getting to the point of fully realizing this often requires breaking through a kind of wall of resistance – of disbelief or false assumptions that healing only happened in the era of Jesus and his immediate followers.

Mary Baker Eddy, who discovered Christian Science, showed that wasn’t so. She writes, “The physical healing of Christian Science results now, as in Jesus’ time, from the operation of divine Principle, before which sin and disease lose their reality in human consciousness and disappear as naturally and as necessarily as darkness gives place to light and sin to reformation. Now, as then, these mighty works are not supernatural, but supremely natural. They are the sign of Immanuel, or ‘God with us,’ – a divine influence ever present in human consciousness ...” (“Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures,” p. xi).

We might say that Christian Science is “old” in that it draws from Christ’s original Christianity that proves God is Spirit, so we are spiritual. It is also “new” in that it not only restores “primitive Christianity and its lost element of healing” (Mary Baker Eddy, “Manual of The Mother Church,” p. 17) but explains Christ’s Christianity as a timeless Science that can be practiced today. As we learn the precepts and laws of this Science, as demonstrated so clearly by Christ Jesus, we experience a shifting of our thinking – from a material view to this spiritual understanding of life – and we find healing.

I’ve been a Christian Scientist all my life, and in my extended family, we’ve experienced healings of a broken back, migraines, serious burns, a broken leg, and many kinds of illnesses, business problems, and relationship issues. Sometimes the healings I’ve experienced have been hard-won, and other times they have happened instantly. But each healing has felt like a new discernment of the original practice of spiritual healing based on Jesus’ words and works.

The newness and the nowness of Christ’s original Christianity really came alive for me one Sunday when I was one of two Readers at a Sunday service in the branch Church of Christ, Scientist, where I was a member. As I was reading the Bible to the congregation, I was suddenly almost overwhelmed by nausea and dizziness.

At first, I was afraid I would pass out in front of everyone. But on the heels of that fear came the thought that the words I was reading from the Bible were timeless truths, and nothing could stop these truths from going out to the congregation. The words might have been thousands of years old, but they were living prayers, and I could feel their healing influence right then and there.

After I finished reading my section of the Bible, I sat down and the other Reader took over, reading both from the Bible and from Science and Health, which sheds light on the spiritual, healing ideas at the heart of the Scriptures. I felt enveloped in divine Love, and a wonderful sense of peace and quiet joy. Right before the church service ended, I was able to join in, healed and happy.

The readings in each church service share the teachings of Christian Science, which is the law of God, good – universal, impersonal, and natural. This divine law impacts everyone. Healing in Christian Science is fully accessible to all who are receptive to a new, more spiritual view of God and of themselves.

Breaking through a veneer of disbelief, assumptions, and stereotypes about church and religion – and being curious enough to go through the doors of those churches as my grandfather finally did – everyone may find new ways to experience an age-old Christianity that affirms healing as a present possibility in all avenues of life.