HOW I FOUND CHRISTIAN SCIENCE May 10, 2010 Issue

WHEN I 'PUT ON THE ARMOUR OF LIGHT'

SYLVESTER MOUYALE

I HAIL FROM LUANDA, a small farming village in the western part of Kenya. Christian Science came into my life in 1970, when I was exploring different religions and systems, looking not for a holier-than-thou attitude to life but a mellow, loving, and principled approach.

I was in my late teen years, residing in Nairobi, the capital of Kenya, where all the action is. Though I tried to figure out the meaning and nature of life, I could not come to any satisfying conclusions. I was a born-again Christian and was reading the Bible, but—like gazing into a mirror, which doesn't work in the dark—I felt I was not really seeing what was behind the Bible's teachings.

Then one Sunday morning as I was footing it along the Nyerere road, I passed the local branch of the First Church of Christ, Scientist (in Nairobi), across the way. Seeing that church assured me there was a completely different type of religious persuasion that did guide people like a flock to return to the fold and to read the Bible understandingly, rather than using holier-than-thou or emotionalized, high-pressure evangelism.