Testimony of Healing March 13, 1989 Issue

It would be very hard for me to imagine what course my life...

Gilbert F. Donatelli, Jr.

It would be very hard for me to imagine what course my life might have taken had I not become aware of Christian Science early in my college years. Throughout my childhood my mom and dad had imparted to me a deep love of God and a desire to know Him better, but I had become increasingly frustrated with trying to reconcile what I had been learning in school with the rather humanlike picture of God I had been taught.

By the time I was in college I was cynical and agnostic, for I could not see the sense of believing in a mysterious, impotent, and whimsical God. Though I knew the Ten Commandments and had been taught that God is Love, I wanted more than mere belief; I needed to know the "why" and "how" of spiritual law and to be convinced that God wasn't a myth. A passage in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy aptly describes my state of thought at that point. It states (p. 258): "A mortal, corporeal, or finite conception of God cannot embrace the glories of limitless, incorporeal Life and Love. Hence the unsatisfied human craving for something better, higher, holier, than is afforded by a material belief in a physical God and man."

During high school I had become a regular user of marijuana and alcohol, and I had become addicted to cigarettes although I repeatedly tried to quit this habit. I had also experimented with harder drugs and "mind-altering" chemicals. By my first year in college I was having severe bouts of depression and paranoia, for I knew that all this was wrong, and I feared that my life and prospects were in jeopardy.

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