“The Mrs. Eddy way of life, I realized, called for ceaseless effort and unflagging self-exertion, all of which I was cheerfully ready to give—provided it was being asked of me by a God of living hope. But no such God could I find in the Mrs. Eddy textbook, Science and Health.”

So I told a national conference of the Fellowship of Former Christian Scientists, held in St. Louis on June 27-29, 2025. My talk was presented on video when last-minute circumstances kept me from traveling. You can read it below, or watch it here.

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Friends, hello, I’m John Andrews. These fellowship conferences have come to mean more and more to me through the years. It’s a joy to be with you, even if not in person. Today I want to tell you about the best thing I ever did. But first a word about the historical context, the big picture.

Starting in 1875—150 years ago, or two long lifetimes—a plague of honey-sweetened lies swept across America and other Christian countries, deceiving and damaging millions of people, infecting countless families with its glib falsehoods, obscuring the life-giving truths of the Bible with its empty promises of a new and better revelation.

This was the Mary Baker Eddy self-help system, calling itself Christian Science and purporting to improve upon Scripture– claiming to take the possibilities of human fulfillment to a level that even Jesus had scarcely hinted at. But it was all a fever-dream, all of it.

Now the Christian Science moment in world history is over, thanks be to God. CS ranks are dwindling. CS influence is waning. The whole thing came and went in the relative blink of an eye, mercifully, though untold harm was done.

You and I as former Christian Scientists, no longer beguiled by Mrs. Eddy but befriended by the Lord Jesus Christ, now come together in grateful fellowship to celebrate our new birth in Him, to remediate the harm that was done, and to embrace others seeking an exit from CS and a doorway into the kingdom.

One lifetime ago—exactly 75 years, as it happens, a few miles from here in midtown St. Louis—I entered first grade at Principia. The best part of a decade would have to unroll before I could wear the coveted gold and blue Prin letterman’s jacket.

But I dug it out of mothballs for your amusement this evening—symbolizing the earnest identity of a devoted young Christian Scientist in which I was taught to “clothe” myself as the years rolled on, from 1950 all the way to 1980.

The CS way of life was in my DNA. I had been bred for it. Anna Andrews, my great-grandmother, helped establish Principia’s boarding department. Her son George Andrews was in the first graduating class and became the first dean of Principia College. His eldest son David Andrews served as Principia’s president, and his youngest son John Andrews—my father—started the Adventure Unlimited Colorado camps.

I was helping my dad run the A/U camps, and serving as first reader in my local church, and raising my daughter Tina—herself a Principian—and her sister and brother with my Prin College sweetheart, Donna, when the spiritual “garment” of Christian Science began to feel ill-fitting and unserviceable.

The Mrs. Eddy way of life, I realized, called for ceaseless effort and unflagging self-exertion, all of which I was cheerfully ready to give—provided it was being asked of me by a God of living hope. No such God could I find in the Mrs. Eddy textbook, Science and Health.

What I mean by a God of living hope is simply this: a God who can answer with a ringing “yes” to four basic questions as I look to the future. One: does someone love me; love me fiercely and lavishly and unconditionally? Two: is there someone in charge of the whole universe and all reality, someone we can trust?

Three: are things in this messy and mixed-up world of ours ultimately going to get better? And four: will everything that now seems so puzzling and pointless finally come to make sense?

CS completely fails this test. The seven synonyms and the Scientific Statement of Being provide at best an icy logic—not a single warm ray of hope. Impersonal divine Principle may be a some-thing to theorize about, but in no way is it a some-one to companion with and confide in.

If you want a God who will hear your pleadings and prayers, a God who will patiently forgive your shortcomings, a God who will delight in you as the apple of his eye, don’t come knocking on the CS door for that. You can knock forever and not get an answer. No one is home.

If you want a heavenly Father who identifies with your sufferings, and an Elder Brother who has actually taken on your sufferings, even to the shedding of blood, forget it. That’s not the Christian Science God.

Think about it. Hope is not wishing or will-power or a mind-game we play with ourselves.  Hope is a solid reliable expectation of a better tomorrow.

 Hope happens in stories. Hope happens in dramatic tension and suspense. Eden to exile to homecoming.  Bethlehem to Calvary to Galilee. First act, second act, last act, curtain. That’s where hope happens.

Hope does not happen in a glossy still photograph of perfect God and perfect man, somehow clouded over with mortal mind. A photograph where you have to work and work to see the picture as perfect and stop seeing it blurry.

Work and work, work and work, today, tomorrow, forever. Are you kidding me? Where’s the hope in that? That’s almost the definition of hopeless.

And hopeless was where I found myself in 1980, age 36, full of worldly success but utterly empty inside. Christian Science self-salvation was doing nothing for me—actually less than nothing, for its glossy picture of perfection had become woven into the litany of lies I was telling to excuse all my selfishness and sin.

Then little by little I began to experience the hope of the gospel—Jesus Christ crucified and risen, reigning at God’s right hand, interceding for me in heaven and soon to return in glory.

It took another dozen years before I fully shook off the Mrs. Eddy mentality and gave myself to Jesus as a baptized Christian. That story is told in my chapter of Lauren Hunter’s book, Leaving Christian Science, and in my own book, Discovering a Larger God.

It was tough going a lot of the time, but now I had a mighty hope to propel me forward. Someone did indeed love me and delight in me—King Jesus. Someone was indeed in charge of the whole human story, past, present, future—King Jesus.  He it was that would set all things right at the end of days. He it was that would unveil all mysteries in a blaze of truth.

He it was that got me up every morning to face the day in sunshine or in storm, rejoicing with joy in the journey—King Jesus.

At last came the day when I realized the old smug CS-Prin-A/U identity was no longer who I wanted to be. Instead I wanted to join the grateful throng in Revelation 7—rescued from tribulation, washed in the blood of the Lamb, robed all in white.

No smugness or superiority. No recriminations or rancor. Nothing but humble adoration. That wonderful old gospel song, “Two Coats,” says it all:

“I’ll tell you the best thing I ever did do.

I took off the old coat and put on the new.”