Questions and answers

Ask your questions. We'll print some answers. Tom McElroy, a Christian Science practitioner from Boston, Massachusetts, and Ginny Luedeman, a Christian Science practitioner and teacher from Salem, Oregon, share their responses to this question from a teen. 

Q: I really want to read Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy. I know I could learn so much from it, but each time I've tried, I haven’t been able to get past the first chapter. What can I do?

A: I think you can consider that very desire within you to read the book a calling, a way of knowing there’s good there for you. It’s divine Love’s way of saying, “I have something here for you,” and that you’re right not to let anything stand in your way from engaging with that message.

What’s been helpful to me at times is to ask myself in a really honest way why I want to read the book. What am I looking for? What questions do I have? What do I need? What do I want to learn?

I think going to the book with personal questions, with a yearning for something that’s meaningful to us—not just what other people say we can or should get out of it—can be really helpful. Then, instead of it feeling like we’re trying to figure out and do something with Science and Health, the book becomes a resource that speaks to us, that is doing something with us. We get to be the recipient of the living inspiration we come in contact with in the book. It’s not a passive relationship, it’s an active one, where we go with questions—a bit like you’d go talk to a mentor—and the book speaks to us, teaches us, and helps us. It feels alive and engaging, and really real and personal.

I also often find it helpful to let go of all expectations and just read. Not to try to make something inspiring, but just to read until something jumps off the page in a way that I didn’t make happen. I don’t get stuck that way. I just keep cruising along, like on a road trip, until some spiritual view makes me stop and go, “Wow!”

A: I know what you mean about finding it hard to get past the first chapter. Some days, I only make it through the first page!

Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, the book written by Mary Baker Eddy, is amazing and so deep. It’s so full of thought-provoking ideas—ideas like, “To those leaning on the sustaining infinite, to-day is big with blessings” (p. vii ). Wow, what a thought: that there’s an “Infinite” to lean on. And that’s only the first sentence!

Reading Science and Health can be a wonderful healing and enlightening experience. At times I love to read different chapters out of order. The “Fruitage” chapter in the back of the book is really powerful. I sometimes find inspiration in reading that chapter first, and then I might feel moved to understand how the healings described there happened, so I want to explore other chapters like “Prayer” or “Christian Science Practice.”

Sometimes one sentence or idea will just stand out and I will think about it for days.

One time my husband decided to read Science and Health in a day. I couldn’t believe that he could do it, but we were on a ski trip and he had a full day of uninterrupted time, so he got up at 4:00 a.m. and read all day, only stopping for short breaks. Before midnight he finished the entire book! When I asked him how he felt about doing that, his answer cracked me up: He said all he got out of it was “tired eyes.” He decided that his motive wasn’t really a good one, since the book isn’t a novel but is to be pondered and thought about more deeply. We had a good laugh over his experiment, and it was a lesson to me to read Science and Health with an open thought and heart, without worrying about just getting through it.

When I really ponder Science and Health, sometimes I have to quit reading because one sentence or idea will just stand out and I will think about it for days. I find that satisfying. And some passages in Science and Health have been comforting during those times when I feel there is so much more I need to understand in the Bible and Mary Baker Eddy’s writings. One is on page 485 : “Emerge gently from matter into Spirit. Think not to thwart the spiritual ultimate of all things, but come naturally into Spirit through better health and morals and as the result of spiritual growth.”

Enjoy the journey!