Article September 24, 2012 Issue

Freedom of speech

Perry Fisher

When I was a graduate student, I joined the Christian Science college organization (CSO) on campus and was a regular attendant at their weekly testimony meetings. While I received much inspiration from the readings from the Bible and Mary Baker Eddy’s writings, I yearned to be able to share my own demonstrations of Christian Science healing along with the other students who seemed to do so with great ease and naturalness. But fear and self-consciousness kept me from sharing. In fact, I often would leave the meetings feeling worse than before they began. For many months this persisted; it was very discouraging. I just couldn’t seem to overcome the fear. In reaching out to God to help me, the thought came to ask a Christian Science lecturer, after his lecture on campus, for some suggestions. When I told him about my fears and insecurities, the lecturer told me: “Just love your message and those you are speaking to.”

The paralysis of fear was conquered. 

I accepted this idea right away, it just sounded so right, and I understood that turning my thought away from myself and on to giving would put me at ease. I knew that God was the source of the love we express and that God is omnipotent. I was also familiar with the text in First John, “There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear” (4:18). I knew that my motive to share my healings was an unselfish one, and that, since “right motives give pinions to thought, and strength and freedom to speech and action” (Mary Baker Eddy, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 454), this was a spiritual law which would support me. 