Long before cellphones, PAM DEBOLT pumped a dime into the pay phone at her high school in Stockton, California, and called her mom between classes. The two were close, so checking in a couple of times a week fell into an easy rhythm. As Pam recalls, it went like this:
“What are you doin’, Mom?” was Pam’s question.
“Reading the Bible, honey,” came the reply.
A few days later, the call would take a slight shift:
“What are you doin’, Mom?”
“Reading Science and Health . . .”
And so it went.
“I used to think to myself, ‘Oh, Mom, get a life!’ ” says Pam. And it wasn’t until her teenage years were long behind her—when she was in the full-time practice of Christian Science healing—that Pam had an aha moment. “I realized my mother was having more fun than any of us,” she laughs. “It didn’t especially impact me then, but she was deeply involved in the Bible. That really inspired me.”
Today, as a teacher of Christian Science in Santa Rosa, California, Pam’s study of the Bible continues to widen. She still finds inspired notes in the margins of the vast collection of Bibles she inherited from her mother.
Every one is a ‘moment of pop’ !“That’s a cue for me,” she says. “And I’m quick to pass it along to my students. Write stuff down! Insights, ideas, healings—that come from diving into this amazing book. “Every one of those moments is gold.
Pam, in our brief conversation before this one, you mentioned how much you’d love to talk about the Bible.
What can I say? I’m excited about the Bible. I realize that “exciting” might not be the first word people think of when they think of the Bible, but in the last few years, it’s opened up a whole new world to me. When I decided not to struggle with the Bible, but consented to just open it up—that’s when its light kind of filled me.
I came to see that it’s not a mystery novel. It’s like a door that opens wider and wider the more you’re willing to peer into it.
I thought a good kick-off would be a letter Mary Baker Eddy wrote in 1900 to William McKenzie. An excerpt reads: “I never read the Bible now without such an illumination, that every word of it contains a spiritual meaning.”1 That is quite a statement.
You know what I especially love about it? Think about where her starting point was. She had accepted the Bible as entirely spiritual. She says it right there—every word. It’s so clear she came to understand that spiritual illumination isn’t just possible—it’s essential. The revelation of Christian Science is that God, Spirit, is infinite—all there is is Spirit. So this has to be our goal—to understand this sense of the Bible—to feel it— as Mrs. Eddy did. And I think we have to yield to that in our search and in our study.
There’s such a great sense of humility in what she said in that letter: “When I read the Bible now . . . .” She wasn’t always at that standpoint, and she was candid enough to say so.
Well, how do we stay with the idea that, as you say, “Spirit is infinite”—but not fall into seeing “two”—ourselves as diligent students, and this “search and study”?
The concept of “two” is an immediate sense of separation—one over here and one over there. The so-called human condition is hypnotized into identifying with the concept of a separate mind, a separate existence—named “matter.” That feeling of separation comes when we believe that God, Spirit, createdmatter.
But Mrs. Eddy’s spiritual sense shines the light on Genesis—God, Spirit, made everything in His image. The creation of Spirit must be spiritual. If there’s one cause, there has to be one effect.
Our work in the practice of Christian Science is always most effective when we immediately establish the oneness of God and His creation. “God is at once the centre and circumference of being.” 2 In other words, we get God right when we get our sense of identity right.
Do you think we tend to be afraid of the Bible. Hesitant to dig in? We seem to be more willing to keep company with the “standards,” the stories we’re familiar with, or the ones that bring immediate comfort. Yet in that letter, Mrs. Eddy underscores the relevance of interpreting the entire book spiritually.
Yes, but even with that directive we can count on the fact that truth is right there, when we need it and how we need it. And often the “standards” come to us at times of great need. One time I awoke in the middle of the night, weakened by intense pain. I had to crawl across the floor to get to a chair. I just reached out to God, and the words from a psalm were right there: “The Lord is the strength of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?” 3 I felt so strongly in that moment that God was my life and my strength. I always recall how quickly that need was met by such a direct statement of truth.
But that being said, to answer your question— yes, I think we are afraid to dig into the Bible for the truths that clearly lie below the surface. There’s so much intimidation around the Bible, and often a feeling that there’s only one way to understand a story or event. If we’ve been educated to get intellectual about everything—or even just wanting to be a “knower”—it leads to being intimidated by whatever it is we don’t understand. And then we back away from our own exploration because someone else will inevitably “know” more than we do.
Well, there’s so much in the Bible that on first read or tenth read or even 100th read we don’t necessarily understand, or whose message—at least on the face of it—runs counter to Genesis 1. That God, Mind, is entirely good.
And that’s where a desire to identify with our spiritual sense leads our discovery. Do you know what really touches me? Mrs. Eddy’s watershed experience—when she fell on the ice. A doctor predicted she might not live. A couple of days later, she asked her minister if he’d come back and visit her after church—but it was obvious he didn’t think she’d be alive after church. She didn’t really have anywhere to turn. So what did she do? She abandoned all her positions, all her opinions, all her points of view. And she asked for her Bible. That simple act profoundly affects me, because I think to myself, “In that moment, could I have done that? Would I have asked for my Bible?”
But look at the spiritual illumination that took place because of her readiness, her willingness.
So what you’re saying is that abandoning our positions is required, if we’re going to look to the Bible for its spiritual interpretation. And that we’re abandoning these positions for the greater good—because we are being led to something so much greater.
That’s a key point in pretty much everything we do when we’re looking to identify with fresh views—jumping ship on our own positions. Because otherwise that’s all we see. At the point Mrs. Eddy fell on the ice and was told she might die, she had no positions left. But because of her “search and discover” way of thinking, she moved past all positions, including those of the doctor and her frightened friends.
And allowing for the willingness to probe the Bible from the viewpoint of spiritual interpretation might even keep us from needing to wait and do that until we’re in a cliffhanger situation?
Exactly.
So how do we get there?
In my experience, I’ve found the different Bible translations a real feast for my understanding. They are gifts. Obviously we need to be discerning— that’s a given. But as we open our hearts to let the inspiration in, it will come. We might decide to read the Bible steadily straight through, or choose an in-depth, focused study. There’s no one right way. What’s important is that we’re connecting to this masterful work—striving to follow Jesus’ and Mary Baker Eddy’s guidance, so that in really coming to understand the Scriptures from an entirely spiritual standpoint, our individual lives are transformed, and we have the depth of understanding required to pray not just for ourselves, but for our world.
That makes total sense, Pam. It feels counterproductive to take in the Bible as stories and scenarios we do or don’t believe—I mean Bible scholars are changing their views on that score daily. But we do need to hold every concept in the Bible up against present thought, don’t we?
Imagine getting to a place where we are acknowledging on every page that evil has no power—which is exactly what Mary Baker Eddy is doing in Science and Health
That’s the whole point. How Christian Science fits into our study of the Bible is radical. Imagine getting to a place where we are acknowledging on every page that evil has no power—which is exactly what Mary Baker Eddy is doing in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures. In order to accomplish that, we have to face down much of what looks like evil in the Bible—which helps us face down much of what looks like evil in the world today.
So it’s really about love, isn’t it? We can’t love socalled “evil,” but we can love the inversion of what evil is trying to say? If God, Mind is “All-in-all,” 4 then there’s nothing outside this good. So whatever “obstacle” facing someone in the Bible—or that we are facing in our daily lives—can be an opportunity to acknowledge the inversion of the lie?
Right, that’s it! That’s healing. That’s the relevance of the Bible in 2011.
What is “healing” to you?
Well, we tend to get all caught up in “something” to heal. Something to change. To me, healing is wholeness. It’s holiness. When our focus is one of holiness, our sense of reality is transformed, and we come to see our true identity. Actually, there’s nothing to change except our understanding, our viewpoint, of who and what we are. We have to get to that place where we consent to see the Bible from the viewpoint of how we perceive God, and how we perceive ourselves. To me, the Bible is man’s walk with God.
And this walk with God—this spiritual interpretation— comes out of the discovery of Christian Science, Mary Baker Eddy’s realization of the absolute power and presence of God, good—just as Jesus realized it.
And as we get more and more familiar with the Bible, less intimidated by it—almost inhabiting it in a new way—this is when we can really see the vitality it has for us today?
Absolutely. When I open the Bible in the morning, I don’t open it as a ritual, like “This is what I do in the morning.” I just sit down and get quiet. This is when I feel receptive. I meet new friends in the Bible, and get to know individual lives more fully—their struggles and purposes. Take the story in Daniel of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in the fiery furnace. 5. What a story of safety and wholeness and great love. That’s a total take-away for today.
Think about “fire” for a minute. In the Glossary of Science and Health, one of the definitions of fear is “heat.” 6 Well, no matter how hot things got, that trio was not going to be intimidated into giving up what they knew was right—they were not going to worship something other than the God they knew they could trust completely to be totally good.
Have you noticed? We always want to be out of the fire. When we’re in the heat of what feels like a difficult moment, we always want it to be “later.” Well, what about the healing message we can get from that story? If I’m in the fire right now—I’m here, and this is the fire I need to be in. To realize I have everything I need right now. I am one with God. There is no separation, no vulnerable aloneness. There is one cause, one God, and His ever-safe expression—man.
So it’s impossible that infinite Mind could see the fire as something terrible . . . .
That Bible story reminds us that there is safety even in the fire. In fact, the three were safe before the fire, in the fire, and after the fire. God, Mind, wouldn’t know His idea, man, could be anything other than safe.
And so this is the way we are led to the spiritual interpretation? To see what’s really going on in spite of “fiery” appearances?
We’ll discover that the Christ is right here—the native, spiritual sense that belongs to each one of us, that sense that replaces fear. And this is completely practical in our daily lives. If we’re willing to stop and reverse the fear—whatever “fire” we might think we’re in that seems to be out of control— our health, relationships, being pulled into the world headlines. Whatever it is that’s staring us in the face. The lie always takes us home to Truth because Truth is all there is.
It’s humbling to realize that Mrs. Eddy opened the door for each one of us to access God at any point in our own discovery. Because of her own great love and spiritual sense of the Bible, she tells us that God is the only Cause and Creator, and God is good. I live with that!
Can you share with us a couple of Bible translations that you’ve been working with lately?
I have many Bibles—but a few years ago a dear friend sent me the New King James Version. It’s filled with insights—and just reading some of the familiar standards, as you’ve said, in a new light, gives the added dimension I am just so grateful for. For example, in answering one of the temptations in the wilderness, the New King James Version says: “Jesus said to him, ‘It is written again, “You shall not tempt the Lord your God. ’ ” 7 “We are to trust the Father’s providential care, not put him to the test to prove it.” 8 I loved that. It works so beautifully with Christian Science, which explains how very important it is to trust the laws of God—to trust God, not test God. I just find these kinds of things refreshing.
We have so many resources available to understand the Bible. We really just need to be willing to make these discoveries. I have friends who are profound Bible scholars who have opened new doors for me. But then, I go to some online Bible resources, too. And I’ve really appreciated some of the discoveries I’ve made in—believe it or not—The Bible for Dummies.
Did I hear that right?
Yes, you did. It’s right there on the shelf in bookstores along with the scholarly texts. I have friends who say, “How can you read anything that has the word dummies in it?” And I have to admit I had reservations about that, too. Then I thought, maybe I have to relax when it comes to the Bible—even have a little fun. Could I let go of my own preconceptions? And for me this book has had some value. For starters, it’s a way to enter into conversation with others about the Bible. It’s worth a smile or two. The authors are Bible scholars who have found a way to bring information, timelines, story lines, together with a bit of humor.
I think with any Bible reference book, one has to hold everything up to the light of what our individual understanding is in Science. It needs to strengthen and support our search and discovery— but to me it needs to be joyful.
The Bible was so alive to Mrs. Eddy! My sense is that we work as she did—out from the power and presence of Principle, not up to it. We start there, and we stay there. This allows us to think out from God, and not struggle to get up to God—or even to “get” understanding.
I used to ask myself, Why isn’t there a weekly Christian Science Bible Lesson titled “Principle”? And then I realized, well, isn’t Principle the essential nature of every one of the six other synonyms Christian Science gives us for God—Love, Mind, Soul, Spirit, Truth, Life? So it’s inherently included in every Lesson, because Principle is the basis of Mind, Soul, Truth, Life, Love, Spirit.
That leads me to Mrs. Eddy’s statement: “Christianity and Science, being contingent on nothing written and based on the divine Principle of being, must be, are, irrefutable and eternal.”9 In other words, whatever we are coming to understand about the truth of being in every word of the Bible is “contingent on nothing written”— which means whatever is being revealed to us has always been true—for eternity.
I love that—because it means we can let go of all sense of limitation. We really do dwell in the eternal now. That’s all there is. Isn’t that what it says in “the scientific statement of being”? “. . . infinite Mind and its infinite manifestation . . .” 10 existing without time or space, and certainly without the confines of matter.
So God, the divine Principle and His expression, existed before anything called “the Scriptures” came into being. Existence is not contingent on the Bible. But, gratefully, it is revealed in the Bible, and explained in Science and Health. You know the best part? Science and Health leads us to the Bible—and the Bible leads us back to Science and Health.
When Mrs. Eddy said that “. . . the New Testament narratives are clearer and come nearer the heart,” 11 do you think implicit in that is that the Old Testament is filled with “doers”? Even someone like Moses, unquestionably one of the great figures in the Bible—establishing the Ten Commandments and leading his people for 40 years through the wilderness. No one would deny his devotion to God, but in the end, he still thought he had to earn his way to God, didn’t he?
Yes, Moses gave us that sense of upholding man’s moral nature—it’s even part of the spiritual definition of Moses in Science and Health—“moral courage.” 12 But Jesus went way beyond the moral, way past the personal. He took us to a place of great clarity as to what man is—and always has been.
We never have to get stuck in “I am a person, trying to learn this or that, or do this or that, or be healed of this or that.” Often we get so caught up in what we think we have to “do” that we forget our safety is in “being”—being that which God knows.
Jesus’ pure sense of God as Love, and his love for good, trust in good, is what brought us all to a brand new place—I think that’s the “come nearer the heart” that Mrs. Eddy was referring to in her quote about the New Testament.
When he was out there among the people, Jesus never left home—that home being spiritual consciousness. Everybody always points out that he spoke with “authority,” 13 but I see it as something so far beyond that. I found myself reading experience after experience, and what really struck me was Jesus’ poise. What gave him the authority? God did. But his utter conviction that God is All-in-all gave him his poise.
But in order never to leave that place in thought, he often found a quiet refuge—taking off to the desert, to the mountains, or into a fishing boat. He cared for himself so he could care for others. What was he establishing? His understanding of his oneness with God, his divine source, his spiritual identity.
There were always those ready to challenge everything he did. The crowds followed him. The rabbis defied him. Meanwhile he stood in that place of assurance, of confidence, as to man’s entirely spiritual nature. From that vantage point, he teaches us a great lesson—that we can live there as well, and still have compassion, humility, love, understanding. That’s spiritual poise. And that’s what brings healing.
Jesus gave us the means to take forward what he gave us. In that way, we are his disciples.
Mrs. Eddy says in Science and Health, referring to the Glossary: “It contains the metaphysical interpretation of Bible terms, giving their spiritual sense, which is also their original meaning.” 14 Our conversation makes me think she didn’t mean original to indicate “what’s on the page” since certainly not every individual Bible writer had the highest thought—especially in the Old Testament. By original it seems natural that she’s referring to the highest level of thought, the original Mind, pure Mind.
She’s always leading us, isn’t she? And that brings me back to why the Bible is so exciting. As we explore, we find out so much more of what the “original” of something means. It brings us to the consciousness of one Mind, the one Mind that knows—and expresses—only perfection. To me, that is our ever- increasing understanding of God. That search. Mrs. Eddy never let up on her search for God.
Pam, I’d guess that willingness to interpret “every word” in the Bible—the fearless exploration that you’re talking about—can lead to some potent expansion in our study of the weekly Bible Lesson?
Interesting you should mention that. Recently I’ve gotten comments from individuals about the Lesson—everything ranging from “It’s really just for beginners, isn’t it?” to “I’m just not getting much out of it.” Sometimes I wonder if we really do value what the Bible Lesson gives to the world, and what it does for the world. That’s the time for me to say, OK, how can I deepen my own study and value of the Bible Lesson, on which Mrs. Eddy says, “. . . the prosperity of Christian Science largely depends.” 15
So yes, I think we need to value the Bible Lesson by deepening what we bring to it. This isn’t done in a wrap-up 20-minute period in the morning. It’s the “search and discovery” of Life that we’ve been talking about. We can’t let “the world” with its fears and demands and fascination for material things take away our desire for deep journeys to spiritual depths. We can’t afford to.
The Bible Lesson will only be alive as it is alive in us and to us—lived and loved in our individual lives.
As we close, Pam, I wanted to share something I came across in Prose Works. It’s the Clerk’s report for Annual Meeting 1906, and it says: “. . . Mrs. Eddy insisted that her students make, every day, a prayerful study of the Bible, and obtain the spiritual understanding of its promises.” And this next part really got me: “Upon this she founded the future growth of her church . . . .” 16
That just seems like an amazing wake-up call for today, doesn’t it?
You bet it does. And that goes so beautifully with something I keep thinking about—an excerpt of a letter from Mrs. Eddy that a colleague of mine came across when she was doing research in The Mary Baker Eddy Library. “All they are doing who strive only for self will come to NAUGHT. Only a few will carry on the history of Christian Science. Be one of them.” 17
Can you imagine? Each one of us being impelled to be “one of them.” Then there’s no question about the growth of our church. It’s a done deal.