• Editor’s note: “Spiritual leaders answer” is a weekly column inviting Kaua‘i’s religious and spiritual leaders to share their doctrine’s perspective on a suggested subject. Every Friday, a topic is printed, inviting a response. Due to space limitations, submissions are
• Editor’s note: “Spiritual leaders answer” is a weekly column inviting Kaua‘i’s religious and spiritual leaders to share their doctrine’s perspective on a suggested subject. Every Friday, a topic is printed, inviting a response. Due to space limitations, submissions are edited. Thoughts or suggestions for future topics are always welcome. Next week’s subject is on exhaustion. The topic at the end of the column is for the following week.
Wendy Winegar
North Shore Christian Science
“Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures,” by Mary Baker Eddy, ends with 100 pages of testimonies of illnesses healed and lives restored that were submitted by people who were healed just by reading her book.
A reader from Pasadena, Calif., who had suffered a long time with painful and debilitating ossification of hand and knee joints, consulted a renowned specialist who, after examining the x-rays, concluded that the condition would grow worse until the patient would become completely helpless. The testimony continues: “At that time a copy of ‘Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures’ by Mrs. Eddy was loaned me. I read it more from curiosity than with the thought of any physical benefit. As the truth was unfolded to me, I realized that the mental condition was what needed correcting, and that the spirit of truth which inspired this book was my physician. My healing is complete, and the liberation in thought is manifest in a life of active usefulness rather than the bondage of helpless invalidism and suffering. … Her revelation of the practical rather than the merely theoretical application of Jesus’ words, ‘Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free,’ proved to be my redeemer.”
Just as curiosity ultimately led this reader to healing, so curiosity led to the discovery of Christian Science. In Eddy’s autobiography, “Retrospection and Introspection,” she recounts, “My immediate recovery from the effects of an injury caused by an accident, an injury that neither medicine nor surgery could reach, was the falling apple that led me to the discovery how to be well myself, and how to make others so.”
Her miraculous healing, which came over night through prayer and Bible study, a healing that her physician could not explain, set her burning curiosity on a course to find out not only why she was healed, but how she was healed. With the Bible as her textbook, for three years she prayed and studied diligently to understand the divine principle of Christ-based healing and named her discovery Christian Science. Her divinely driven curiosity, a quality of spirit and the ever present healing activity of the Christ, resulted in her writing “Science and Health,” the complete text on Christian Healing. To find out more about Christian Science, read or listen to “Science and Health” and read other testimonies of healing, visit spirituality.com
The Baha’is of Kaua‘i
Curiosity and the thirst for knowledge are a natural part of every child’s development. If exploration and questioning are discouraged, then curiosity, which is the basis for life-long learning, will be limited to those things that are pre-approved by others. This type of curiosity will only lead to the replication of the status quo and not to new knowledge or truth.
We can no longer continue old attitudes that divide. Mankind has reached a stage of maturity that can look beyond personal interests to become world citizens. What begins in childhood with a natural curiosity about the world of nature and its interconnectedness opens us to the world of mankind and its interconnectedness as well. The appreciation of the oneness of mankind preludes the acceptance that world peace is now not only possible, but inevitable.
True peace, however, requires not just a tolerance of another’s belief system, but a true appreciation for the differences. Baha’u’llah, the prophet founder of the Baha’i Faith, requires his followers use their capacity to think and reason to independently investigate spiritual truth. Millions of people from all different religious backgrounds have found the major religions of the world share the same core beliefs. Without being bound by traditions or fears, and with open minds they have accepted the Baha’i faith and the tenet that there is but one God who revealed all the major religions of the world.
Mere curiosity was not enough to lead them to their new Faith. It required tenacity and a strong desire to seek truth, as they understand it. They had the capacity to reason and think and to keep an open mind. This was described poetically by ‘Abdu’l-Baha, the son of Baha’u’llah.
“The state in which one should be to seriously search for the truth is the condition of the thirsty, burning soul desiring the water of life, of the fish struggling to reach the sea, of the sufferer seeking for the true doctor to obtain the divine cure, of the lost caravan endeavoring to find the right road, of the lost and wandering ship striving to reach the shore of salvation.”
Topic for next week:
• Will you speak to us on service?
• Spiritual leaders are invited to e-mail responses of three to five paragraphs to pwoolway@kauaipubco.com
• Deadline each week is Tuesday, by 5 p.m.