Article September 18, 2017 Issue

The specificity of good

Ben Frederick

“To mortal sense,” writes Mary Baker Eddy in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, “Science seems at first obscure, abstract, and dark; but a bright promise crowns its brow. When understood, it is Truth’s prism and praise. When you look it fairly in the face, you can heal by its means, and it has for you a light above the sun, for God ‘is the light thereof’ ” (p. 558).

Growing up in Sunday School, I often felt like a dunce. Despite the best efforts of my teachers, I had a hard time grasping some of what seemed like abstract concepts about God and Christ Jesus’ teachings. I could feel that Christian Science contained a beautiful promise of a perfect, harmonious existence, but it always seemed diffuse and vague, like a bright but cloudy day. There was visible evidence of light: wonderful testimonies I heard in church, stories of God’s transforming power that my Sunday School friends and I studied in the Bible, and even healing in my own life, but a full understanding of the source of that transforming power eluded me.

The summer after my junior year of college, with many questions still in my heart, I decided to take Christian Science Primary class instruction. You might think of class instruction as “college for Christian Science”—and rightly so, because the Board of Education, which oversees class instruction, is the modern form of the Massachusetts Metaphysical College that Mrs. Eddy opened in 1881 (see Science and Health, pp. xi–xii, and the Manual of The Mother Church by Mary Baker Eddy, pp. 88–92).