The Accidental Christian Scientist

How the Truth I glimpsed as a teenager has come roaring back as an adult

I LEFT CHRISTIAN SCIENCE at 18 with a severe case of FOMO.

It was the 90s, I was a free spirit, and my parents weren’t forcing anything weird on me. So I decided there would be no church in my future.

I went to college, joined a fraternity, and indulged in good old fashioned varsity vice.

Five years + three different colleges later I graduated from Florida State University with a degree in Hollywood. With $1,000 to my name, I took the 40 West from Baltimore to Los Angeles behind the wheel of a ‘92 green Geo Storm. It was the year 2000. Reality TV was on the verge of explosion, and I landed a job on a soon-to-be hit show as a producer.

Five years later I quit reality to become an actor. Two years after that I took a short term job as a caregiver to support my acting pursuit, but ended up keeping the job, quitting acting, and writing a book about ditching acting for caregiving. That brought me around the world. I moved to New York in 2015 to turn the unlikely encounter into a play. I lived there until early 2020.

During those adventurous two decades I would occasionally hear the faint Shepard tone of Christian Science buzzing in the background, that still, small, persistent hum of Truth from my teenage years, but I was too seduced by the lure of freedom and sensuality to listen.

And I was lazy. I was physically disciplined. Staying in shape was a priority. But spiritually, mentally, I was in a fog — and I was more than fine with it.

I was always surrounded by excitement, yet I often felt alone. After a few years the worldly pursuits by which my peers seemed to live or die, began losing their luster. I was convinced debauchery was the only thing that would bring zest to my life, but it frequently left me feeling unfulfilled, unhappy, and even ashamed.

Cut to my 40’s.

Here I am again. Back to a religion I never dreamed I’d return to, a life I never wanted… a way of thinking that never quite left. Science found me wiser and ready, and it tracked me down this time, which is why it feels right.

I don’t know who said it first, but in my case it’s accurate: Once you see Truth, you can never unsee it.

In March of 2020 I moved back to where I grew up, Northern Virginia, literally a week before the CDC labelled “Covid” a “pandemic.”

The beginnings of world hysteria was a weird time to re-home. I wasn’t in VA by choice — the move was to help my mom run her financial company, which she had built into a successful business on her own. One of her key employees quit without notice, so duty was calling to come fill a big gap.

While it was gratifying supporting my mom and helping triple the company’s AUM, living in the DMV (Dc-Md-Va) was depressing, especially having been dragged out of what I felt was the greatest city in the world (New York).

I was technically fine moving on from the coasts, until I started living in DC, which was stale, institutional, and uninspired. In LA everyone was open; they talked about art and movies — in DC everyone was secretive; they couldn’t even tell you what they did or where they worked. It felt like a slow death.

My mom retired in 2024. I chose not to take over the company. I could have called any number of West Coast friends for a job at some reality TV show, I could returned to my former life, but Tinseltown had run its course. The pursuit of fame wasn’t as attractive as it used to be. I’d been running around my whole life. I needed roots. I needed routine.

(I needed God)

June, 2024.

I was poking around YouTube and stumbled on a lecture from a Christian Scientist talking about the Sermon on the Mount. Without thinking twice I found his website and called him. After a lively conversation he invited me to enroll in his yearly class that literally started two days later in Princeton, New Jersey. I said YOLO, grabbed my dog, got in my car, and drove four hours to what felt like the start of the rest of my life.

The last 10 months have been a dust devil of downs mixed with a whole lot of ups that feel like “welcome back” gifts from God. In some ways it’s like I’ve reunited with an old friend, in others like I’m feeling my way through the dark.

One thing you learn when you get out of a funk is that it’s rarely the fault of a person, place, or situation — it’s almost always in our own thought. Thoughts alter our physical reality. Christian Science (the “thinker’s religion”) is predicated on good, not evil, as the only reality.

Underneath all the erroneous layers of matter, error, and mortal mind incessantly swirling around the world, is the Supreme Layer of Peace and Permanence. This layer has no beginning or ending. We are all given the ability to learn about this layer of God’s unchangeable reality, and when we learn it we feel it, and when we feel it, that’s when we have healings.

Christian Science is Truth, and Truth is hard at times — hard to apply, hard to take, hard to give. There’s too much talk of “my truth” in modern society. There’s no such thing as “my truth” or “your truth.” There has been only one Truth since the beginning: God is All, and only generates good.

The notion that God is a mix of good and evil was a deception started by the ancient cultured scholars in Rome and Greece. Science predates this flawed human view, taking us back to the true creation in Genesis 1, when “God saw everything that he had made, and behold it was very good.”

Science changes how you see everything — from a roof, to a tree, to a person. A divine metaphysician turns things into thoughts.

For example, a roof isn’t a roof but the God-given concept of protection; a tree isn’t a tree but one of God’s living-breathing creations; a person isn’t a person but a perfect reflection of Divine Mind — and a smile isn’t something the brain or the face does but an angel thought from God. Everything in existence is mental, and by turning things into thoughts we see the world God sees.

There is no mortal ingenuity. No human, even Leonardo da Vinci, has ever created anything as a personal, isolated entity. God is consciousness; He is the sole Cause and Creator of all good and creative things and all good and creative action, especially as it pertains to His children. Bad things are only perceived real in the material realm. In the spiritual realm, the only reality is good. Like the chaffs and the wheat, the material realm and the spiritual realm are separate — they are as oblivious of each other as light is of dark.

God has given us the ability to access this spiritual realm, and there is no better means to accomplish that than with Science.

Mary Baker Eddy, the discoverer and founder of Christian Science, writes in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures:

”The chief stones in the temple of Christian Science are to be found in the following postulates: that Life is God, good, and not evil; that Soul is sinless, not to be found in the body; that Spirit is not, and cannot be, materialized; that Life is not subject to death; that the spiritual real man has no birth, no material life, and no death.”

Though they may not realize it yet, the world outside of Christian Science needs Christian Science. Not only is it the only divine solution to materialism, it’s the only true end to suffering. It provides a sophisticated and absolute self-healing system that doesn’t require doctors, medicine, or fancy rituals, because Jesus never needed them, and his work was directly derived from the immutable Laws of God.

If we had needed physical methods to heal, Jesus would have employed them and told us to do the same.

I started this series a month ago for two reasons: To help correct the endless revolving door of misinformation still going around the world about Christian Science, and to try and reach seekers outside the “CS bubble” who want to learn the only permanent way to heal themselves and others.

I hope you’ll consider subscribing, passing it along, and checking out other entries. I’ll keep them diverse and applicable for everyone. Until next time.

“When a hungry heart petitions the divine Father-Mother God for bread, it is not given a stone, — but more grace, obedience, and love. If this heart, humble and trustful, faithfully asks divine Love to feed it with the bread of heaven, health, holiness, it will be conformed to a fitness to receive the answer to its desire; then will flow into it the “river of His pleasure,” the tributary of divine Love, and great growth in Christian Science will follow, — even that joy which finds one’s own in another’s good.” Mary Baker Eddy