Editorial January 7, 1985 Issue

"To face what we must become"

ALLISON W. PHINNEY, JR.

A visitor from Nigeria was talking with me a few years ago in my office at the Christian Science Church Center. He said, "You know, we Christian Scientists in our country do not have the magnificent buildings you have here in Boston. We do not have all the practitioners. We do not have the comfortable Reading Rooms. We are left naked," he said, "to face what we must become."

He wasn't complaining. He was full of joy and spiritual light when he spoke. There was the fervor of a young revolutionary in his words. He had just completed class instruction in Christian Science and was ready to return to his country to live what he had been taught.

A similar feeling naturally belongs to anyone studying Christian Science with real commitment, whether the Church seems well established where he is, or there are only a handful of members, or he finds himself in a place where government suppression would make it a crime to live openly as a Christian Scientist. Studying Christian Science gives an inrush of joy and possibility. It opens up a new world. Nothing stays the same, because we're walking in the newness of the Christ and not the oldness of human circumstance and limitation.

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