Testimony of Healing June 7, 2010 Issue

UNDESIRABLE CHARACTER TRAITS OVERCOME

First published in the online Indonesian Herald of Christian Science

MOMO PURNOMO YULI

I used to get very easily offended. I had excessively high self-esteem and was arrogant. When someone criticized me, I quickly responded in great anger. When a friend unwittingly said something I didn't like, I would sulk and refuse to talk to him. When an acquaintance had a feast or a party and I was not invited, I felt deeply wounded. At that time I thought that this easily offended behavior and this high self-esteem were natural and not wrong. I felt that those character traits were gifts of God, which I had always had since I was born.

But gradually what I thought was satisfying to my heart and to my feelings became a burden. I felt only bitterness, resentment, grudges, and gloom. I was always blaming others. My life became difficult and full of suffering and problems. I became enslaved by my desire to get even with others in order to be satisfied. I reaped a harvest of chronic illnesses, and I often had to go to the doctors. Financial lack gave me headaches, but I did not want to borrow money since I believed it would be an insult and a humiliation. Complaining, grumbling, and cursing became my close friends. I felt God had permitted these situations, and—like it or not—I had to experience them.

Then one day in 1966, in the city where I lived at that time, Yogyakarta, one of my close friends attended a Christian Science lecture and was instantaneously healed of a serious heart disease. Quite unexpectedly, this friend gave me the Indonesian translation of the book Unity of Good, by Mary Baker Eddy. My friend suggested that I read it. He said that I would discover who I really was, and would become a free man. That word free attracted me because for so long I had been a slave of my own ego. As I read and studied it, the book changed my way of thinking about the Almighty God. It became for me a breakthrough in my search for God, for Truth, Life, and Love. I had thought that God had also created things that are not good, such as sin, disease, and death. But the Lord is too pure to see evil, says the Bible (see Hab. 1:13). Like the sun, which is full of light and energy, God knows no night or darkness. The sun is not influenced by the rotation of the earth, and this is a scientific fact. So it is with our lives: God gives us light and health, and nothing else can influence us.

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