The Christian Way Forums / The Christian Way Forums / Recovery and Health Issues / How did Mary Baker Eddy heal? / Latest Posts

RE: How did Mary Baker Eddy heal?

Linda — Sun, 15 Jul 2007 13:29:59 GMT

[quote]My mother endured 7 years of marvellous little healings before she died emaciated and ruined from an untreated pulmonary disorder.[/quote]

So sorry to hear about your mother, Ruggedtoast. You've described what I've seen or heard about over and over. Healing headaches is different than healing cancer or heart disease, but many CSists who feel they have "demonstrated over the belief" in their headaches think they can do so with cancer -- and they end up dying when timely treatment could have taken care of the problem. I find it very sad and downright annoying.

RE: How did Mary Baker Eddy heal?

ruggedtoast — Sat, 14 Jul 2007 14:17:46 GMT

[quote][b]Anonymous (3/2/2007)[/b][hr]I have read two bios on MBE, both by the CS publishing so I imagine they are quite biased in her favor and I am only getting a positive take on her.

I have seen some negative references on here to her, and was wondering if some can share more of the complete picture of her than I read in the two bios.

First of all, from what I read, she performed many healings during her lifetime, over 150 cases from what I read. And some of them were quite dramatic and miraculous, similar to what Jesus did.

Supposedly she healed a man with a gunshot wound who was on his deathbed, healed a person with cancer that was eating them up and their jugular vein was showing, healed cripples (one in the park), and even brought back to life a few people, including her assistant. Is all of these claims true, and how did she do it, did she just pray and see them as whole, and instantly they were healed. I am just fascinated by her healings and it is hard for me to just dismiss them. That is what drew me in to studying CS.

I know she died at around age 90, but from what I read she died peacefully with no pain. I read some reference on here somewhere that she took morphine, I do not know if that was at the end of her life or some other time. But I find this surprising, since she preaches not to have anything to do with medicine, to rely on prayer alone. Can someone share more about this and enlighten me about the truth of this situation.

Anything anybody else can share about MBE being hypocritical about healing and what she did herself, and was she always successful at healing herself, etc. Thank you for any contributions and helping me to understand CS and MBE better. Steve[/quote]

None of MBE's 'healings' were corroborated scientifically and the science that was around then was somewhat inconsistent to say the least. Christian Science is awash with stories of healings that have no medical validation whatsoever. This is because they are fraudulent. Modern Christian Scientists have a very poor understanding of human biology and a very large emotional investment in ignoring what they do know.

Therefore simple diseases that get better naturally are transmuted into dire illness that responded to miraculous healings, and sadly, severe illnesses that necessitate immediate treatment are ignored and the patient suffers endlessly too ashamed to report anything other than healings to their friends. My mother endured 7 years of marvellous little healings before she died emaciated and ruined from an untreated pulmonary disorder. Every time one symptom subsided , that augured the great healing that never came. It never came because CS healing does not work, it never has and it never will.

There are probably hundreds of thousands of people who have died under CS treatment, every one of which could be supported by scientific evidence that lack of treatment killed them or at least hastened their demise. Christian Science ignores all of these and spins what it thinks are healings.

As far as MBEs healing are concerned even if the people involved believed their diseases were accurately involved it is unlikely that the medical diagnosis existed then to provide an accurate prognosis. Every young CSer hears the baloney about the cancer guy with the jugular vein but no one says that back then the chances of that person having a doctor who could assess cancer or recognise a jugular vein were slight to say the least.

Incidentally there is little evidence that MBE died without pain. She was reported to be a habitual morphine user and regularly had dental treatment, precisely because she couldnt stand the pain of her rotting teeth, something she had no ability whatsoever to heal.

RE: How did Mary Baker Eddy heal?

Linda — Fri, 09 Mar 2007 14:21:10 GMT

[quote][MBE] exercised authoritarian leadership over her followers and claimed to never make mistakes (she could change her mind, but this never represented her having made a mistake).[/quote]

I made this comment as part of Post #13284 on 3/3/07. In a private conversation, someone pointed out to me that the published quotes leading me to this conclusion may have just referred to her leadership of the CS Movement, but not to her life in general. I don't want to give incorrect information so will say that I can't be sure whether her claim to be mistake-free extended into her day-to-day life. The person with whom I was conversing said that MBE did use phrases like "my mistake" in some of her correspondance.

Here are some quotes that I have found regarding MBE and mistakes:

". . . it seems that the changing of her mind was a privilege that our Leader reserved for herself, and she exercised it without any regard whatever for what had gone before. . . . Then she said to me, 'Mr. Dickey, people say that I am changeable,—that I change my mind frequently, but when I do, it is always God that changes me. . . . I would not condemn myself, therefore, for what seemed a mistake, but would include it as part of the working out of the problem'” (Adam Dickey, "Memoirs of Mary Baker Eddy, p. 32, emphasis added).

"Often the reasons for which our Leader took action in certain directions were not clear to the workers about her. It would seem as if the reason advanced by her was a poor one. . . . This, of course, was mortal mind’s analysis of her work. . . . It always turned out, however, that her action was right, regardless of the reason assigned, which convinced those who were familiar with her work that her judgment was unerring in every detail, and that in following the direction of divine Wisdom, she never made a mistake. Often I heard her say with great impressiveness that in over forty years of church leadership, she had not made a mistake, a record that is most truly remarkable (Dickey, p. 43, emphasis added).

Nenneman comments that Mrs. Eddy “did not make a habit of saying she had made mistakes. That she took many risks, she would admit.” (Richard Nenneman, "Persistent Pilgim," p. 203)

Hopefully this will clarify things a bit. :)

RE: How did Mary Baker Eddy heal?

Linda — Wed, 07 Mar 2007 11:27:01 GMT

If you're referring to Mrs. Eddy's healings, I can't validate or refute them all because I don't have enough information to do so. But I strongly suspect that some of them are, at least, exaggerated. For example, I doubt that MBE could make storm clouds disappear as she said she did on many occasions (Adam Dickey, "Memoirs of Mary Baker Eddy," p, 22). It is an established fact that the "healing" that led to her "discovery" of CS -- the famous fall on the ice -- was greatly exaggerated by both MBE and her followers.

Mrs. Eddy blamed many of her own health problems on attacks of "malicious animal magnetism," and she had a group of people keeping mental "watches" over her as she slept because she frequently had physical problems during the night. She also claimed that her third husband's death was mental poisoning rather than heart problems as the autopsy said.

My point is that, while she may or may not have healed, there is evidence to make me wonder whether her record was as good as reported.

Regarding CS healing in general, I can't say whether it does or does not heal. But from what I've seen, heard, and read in authorized CS publications, a great deal of what is labeled "CS healing" falls under the categoires of:

-- Relief of stress related symptoms

-- The body finally getting better naturally

-- Wishful thinking

-- Spiritual origin (yes, God can heal if He chooses to)

Any healing that occurs while a person is using CS treatment is assumed to be the result of CS, even if that healing would have occurred without CS treatment. CSists are generally so ignorant about how the body works that they don't understand the signs of naturall healing. I suspect this was true in Mrs. Eddy's day as well as now.

RE: How did Mary Baker Eddy heal?

Linda — Sat, 03 Mar 2007 08:39:34 GMT

[quote]I have seen some negative references on here to her, and was wondering if some can share more of the complete picture of her than I read in the two bios.
[/quote]

As I said in another thread, my book [url=http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1563841711/qid=1015603325/ref=sr_11_0_1/102-0404371-8172953]The Religion That Kills[/url] presents an overview of Mrs. Eddy including her background and leadership style. (Disclaimer for those rejecting anything I'm about to say because of my book's title: I wrote the book; my publisher chose the "in-your-face" title over my strong objections.)

Chapter 4 of the book, which you can read using the "search inside this book" feature on amazon.com, lays it out better than I can here, but I'll hit a few highlights:

-- Mrs. Eddy was very charismatic woman -- interesting to be around even though she could be very difficult. I think she was very intelligent, could be very charming, and believed the CS teachings she developed.

-- She exercised authoritarian leadership over her followers and claimed to never make mistakes (she could change her mind, but this never represented her having made a mistake).

-- She blamed "animal magnetism" and "mental malpractice" for the things that went wrong in her life and blamed her students for things like her health problems, her third husband's death (the doctor said it was heart failure; she publicly claimed that Asa Eddy had been "mentally murdered" by the negative thoughts of a disaffected student), her nocternal illnesses (she assigned a group of her students to mentally protect her as she slept, and if she had a bad night she blamed them for not "keeping their watch" properly), defections of students, and even her own death (if the students had protected her better, she wouldn't have gotten sick).

-- In the name of reflecting divine Mind, she expected her meals to be cooked perfectly, her house to be kept in extreme order, and her workers to know the locations of items in her house that they had never seen before.

-- She said that she fulfilled biblical prophesy and allowed several comparisons between herself and Jesus. (This was NOT an attempt to deify herself as many people claim, since she did not consider Jesus to be part of the Christian Trinity.) She allowed many of her inner circle of followers to come to the conclusion that she is "the woman" in the 12 chapter of Revelation, the last book of the Bible.

-- After several of her most promising students defected in 1881 citing her "frequent ebullitions of temper, love of money, and the appearance of hypocrisy," her remaining students drafted a set of resolutions which, among other things, declared, "we do understand her to be the chosen messenger of God to bear his truth to the nations, and unless we hear 'Her Voice,' we do not hear 'His Voice.'" Mrs. Eddy edited and approved this resolution which recognizes HER as the avenue to understanding God.

Everything I've said above is referenced in Chapter 4 of my book so I won't bother to provide the references here.

As I say in my book, Mrs. Eddy was a remarkable woman. But she exercised huge mental control over her followers.

For more information providing balance to the rosy biographies you read, see the "Materials Not Supporting Christian Science" section in the [url=http://www.christianway.org/resource%20list.htm]Resource List[/url] on the main Christian Way web site.

RE: How did Mary Baker Eddy heal?

birdstrike — Fri, 02 Mar 2007 19:32:42 GMT

Hi Steve:

I read a biography of Benjamin Franklin once, and in it, he predicted that the world was on the verge of a "scientific revolution" - and he was right. The 19th century was a time when science really began to bear fruit: new machines, new discoveries, new medicines, new processes. Note that we were clueless as to where the lines between science and spirituality were as well. Take electricity for instance: What is this strange new force? We know that it does affect the human body; does it affect the soul as well? Does it have healing power? These were the questions of the day, and people were hoping to solve all manner of problems through new discoveries and inventions. Note that Mary Baker Eddy talks negatively about a belief in "electricity".

So, as you can guess, the 19th century was also a time of snake-oil-salesmen - and snake-oil-saleswomen. And a person actually could make a good living by travelling from town to town, P.T. Barnum style, selling "miracles". Just as the placebo effect works for a bottle of cocaine-laced alcohol, it also worked for feel-good religions like Christian Science. And without an internet, plagiarism was easy - so ripping of theology (usually old heresies) was commonplace; one certainly wouldn't get caught in their lifetime. Just look at the explosion of wacky new religions - (mostly American) during the period. Most of these were started by very charismatic people, who talked a good talk, and told a desperate, hard-working people what they wanted to hear. For example,

Did you know Christ's Church completely failed, and that God came down to one of these charismatic-drifter types (a person formerly arrested for a con-type crime), and made him the sole prophet of Christ's new church? And God told him that it was okay to "marry" as many women/girls as he wanted? And an angel gave him a new "bible" on gold plates (but the angel took the gold plates back)? Many thousands of people really believe this, Steve.

Did you know that there is "nothing greater" than to kill for Allah? There are 72 virgins awaiting you if you do? And it's okay to marry - and consumate the marriage of - a 9 year old girl? (there's a pattern here with the male leaders, isn't there?!) Untold millions of people believe this too.

In the end, Steve, one has to look at a belief system logically and from all sides. And, one of the most beautiful things about the Western, Christian tradition is that accepts, rather than rejects, logical thought. God is rational. God is objectively true, and His religion must make sense. Wisdom is God's, and if something does not make sense, then it is obviously not from God. So when one does something so important as to select a belief system that they will view the world through, one has to be very objective. Don't pick a religion upon the basis of what you want to hear! Pick one upon the basis of: Is this true or not?!

There is a ton of material out there that gives the other side of the Christian Science story; perhaps Linda and Do Go can recommend some to you. I can even send you a little blurb in a private e-mail if you wish, from MBE's own literary advisor.

But never stop using your head! Christian Science has to make logical sense, else it isn't really a "science", is it?!

Birdstrike