Editorial July 30, 1984 Issue

But is it true?

ALLISON W. PHINNEY, JR.

Many have had the experience of being greatly inspired by something they've proved in Christian Science but then encountering the world with all its implacable insistence on being the final and only reality. The question that sometimes seems to arise from the depths of the heart is, But is it true? How can it be true when the world's reasoning and evidence oppose it so thoroughly and even fiercely?

It's important to question the questions. One has a right to dig in one's heels, to use reason on the side of spiritual light and not be swept away. We can ask, for example, Where did the conviction of the reality and practicality of spiritual things come from in the first place? The answer is that it came from moments of opening thought to God instead of hearing only the usual cacophony of the material senses. Spiritual understanding and its resultant healing come whenever the human heart is ready to listen.

Spiritual conviction is no mere fantasy fostered by naiveté. Nor is a Christian Scientist's faith dependent upon being sheltered from the so-called realities of disease and evil, as the contemporary skeptical mind would insist. As have the most devoted Christians through history, the Christian Scientist has found his conviction of divine reality forged in the raging furnace of the world's contention that material circumstances are all there is to existence.

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