I had to find out for myself

HOW I FOUND CHRISTIAN SCIENCEJANUARY 13, 2025 ISSUE – John Simon

My dad was a good man and a good country doctor who would make house calls well into the night. One day, when I was about ten years old, a new family moved into our neighborhood. They were Christian Scientists. My parents, knowing no more of Christian Science than the general medical literature provided, cast subtle aspersions on them.
Ten years later, my dad told me that the various maladies of an overwhelming percentage of the patients who came to his office with medical problems were entirely mental in nature. His words stuck with me and were foundational in preparing me to later embrace Christian Science. It helped me realize that being aware of my thinking was crucial. I could either accept a particular physical complaint as my reality or I could say, in the words of Jesus, “Get thee behind me, Satan” (Luke 4:8). Many thoughts that come to us are suggestions rather than facts or truth, and I could choose where to put my faith and trust. This was a major awakening for me.

My growth in Christian Science was gradual, the result of an accumulation of insights. At first, I saw others healed. My wife was healed of infectious hepatitis (see Caroline Cox-Simon, “When I read a testimony in an issue of the . . . ,” TheChristian Science Journal, April 1990), and our six-year-old son was healed of hearing problems. I began to turn my thoughts away from the belief that we are helpless in the face of disease to the knowledge that God is our omnipresent healer. 
The first personal evidence I had of Christian Science’s efficacy was one year when, like all of us each year, I was subjected to the barrage of media warnings about flu season. But this time, armed with what I now knew to be true, I realized that the flu had no power, and I was quickly healed of its symptoms. Now, when I feel the incipient signs of a “flu bug,” I take a stand and deny that it has any power at all to affect my well-being because God, good, is the only power. 
Since then, I have had many healings—of fevers, poison ivy, stomach pain, arthritis, Lyme disease, “the blues,” etc. As kind and skilled as my father was, he misunderstood the power of Christian Science. Like many who have made medicine their profession, he was unaware of Christian Science as an effective healing practice. But Mary Baker Eddy writes in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, “Millions of unprejudiced minds—simple seekers for Truth, weary wanderers, athirst in the desert—are waiting and watching for rest and drink” (p. 570).
It’s my hope that seekers everywhere, whether in the medical profession or not, can discover Christian Science and grow in the understanding of God’s healing power as I did and bring the benefits of Christian Science into their lives.