A screw loose?

If I may be permitted to speak a little about my church’s Reading Room. Yesterday when we arrived, there were two men at the window where the Bible and Science and Health* are displayed with marked passages from the current week's Bible Lesson.**

One man was reading from the Bible. This man spoke of having a sensation of something rattling around in his brain. They were looking for someone to pray for this man.

We said we could pray for him, although no arrangement was made. We had a short conversation, and I was surprised to find myself repeating the scientific statement of being***, the other chap having mentioned “beings.”

Of course, I began to know the truth about this man – both of them in fact. The other chap was being such a good friend. The phrase “a screw loose” came to mind. I looked up “no screw loose” on JSH Online. Up came an article by Charles M. Carr. (He had been prominent in the Christian Science movement when I was a new student.)

The title of the article was “The Business of Ideas.” Carr was a space [advertising space] salesman working for various magazines, and business wasn’t good. He spoke to a practitioner of Christian Science saying that Christian Science wasn’t working for him about business, though he was confident of healing any physical problems he met with.

I will quote his exchange with the practitioner directly from the article which can be found in The Christian Science Journal of July 1979.

           “…right here in my business Christian Science is not working." "What's that?" he retorted. "Christian Science isn't working here in business," I repeated, "Not now, not for me." "There's a screw loose somewhere," he assured me, "and you can be sure it isn't with God." That began to wake me up.

Quoting again:

A short time later while on a sales trip I thought, "Suppose I were a lawyer. Would I get paid primarily for reading lawbooks? No. If I were a lawyer and just read lawbooks, I probably couldn't pay my bills." Then I could see my mistaken approach toward Christian Science. I was reading the Bible Lesson and the Christian Science periodicals, but not taking the truth, articulating it in my own words, and applying it specifically to the situation at hand.

That last sentence is what I am aiming to make a point of about the Mary Baker Eddy Library’s Women in History series. Surely, those wonderful women had come to “...taking the truth, articulating it in (their) own words, and applying it specifically to the situation at hand.”

I would like to stand up at a Wednesday Testimony Meeting (held in Christian Science churches around the world) and ask the congregation to pray about that man’s problem, but that may not be appropriate. Someone has said that the problems of the world come to the door of Christian Science to be resolved.

Joyce Voysey

*Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy

**Christian Science Bible Lessons

*** See Science and Health page 468 – answer to the question “What is the scientific statement of being? This is read at the conclusion of every Sunday service in Christian Science churches and has often been proven to be a healing force.