Testimony of Healing July 22, 1996 Issue

As a child, I was faithfully taken to a Christian Science Sunday School

Steven F. Scheiern

As a child, I was faithfully taken to a Christian Science Sunday School. Although my parents were good people, I left home at an early age and adopted a fast-paced life. I found myself indulging to greater degrees in drinking alcohol. At length I would drink until I could not function, and this would occur several times a week. I was also enslaved to cigarette smoking.

As this lifestyle continued, a dangerous and subtle evil took hold in thought; the lower my self-esteem plummeted, the lower became my self-restraint. Finally any whim of desire ruled the day. I eventually began using cocaine and very strong forms of speed, which induced a false sense of security. I had no idea just how I was being manipulated until much later when I read the article "Ways that are Vain," in which Mary Baker Eddy speaks of animal magnetism's effects, stating: "The victims lose their individuality, and lend themselves as willing tools to carry out the designs of their worst enemies, even those who would induce their self-destruction" (The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, p. 211). Although I was married, and had always abhorred disloyalty to the commitment of marriage, the temptation to flirt with other women became more and more alluring, until I was stupid enough to begin this; and then, accepting the temptation as my own thinking, walked blindly into the immoral act. My life was in total disarray, and all I had once held precious I found I had thrown away. Although she tried to forgive my behavior, my wife, who had truly been my best friend for eighteen years, lost all respect for me. She tried to see past my behavior, but I gave her no hope of improvement.

Then two very significant things happened.

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