 Posted Friday, January 06, 2006 7:34 PM
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I don't want to rant, and I don't want to sound redundant (I'm fixing to do both), but I am baffled at how Christian Science makes sense or seems right to anyone. Honestly, how can any sensible person feel comfort or contentment in Christian Science. A comforting thing about most other religions is the fellowship and the collective concern for anyone else who has an problem, be it physical, emotional, occupational, monetary-whatever. That aspect in Christian Science churches is non exisistent for the most part. For that 45 minutes each Sunday, everyone sits and listens to the same thing they've been hearing for years (and it still doesn't make sense!). 2 of the 7 MBE songs are sung in rotation (1 if you're in Sunday School). Then, everyone retreats and you don't see them until the following Sunday. And the cycle just continues. You could go to services for half a year and you will have read and sung all there is to read and sing. What an incredibly monotonous way to conduct a service! Christian Science must have been intended for left-brain thinkers, because everything is concrete and there's no need to worry about change or deviation. Having left the religion about 5 years ago, I sometimes want to go back to my old church and bring these things to light. To the people i've know most of my life. I often think about people that still go there that I've know since i was a child and i wonder how committed they are to Christian Science. I wonder how they would respond if they were faced with a life-threatening illness. It would seem crazy to want to work through the pain without the aid of medicine. And for what?!? What result comes from following Christian Science? What result comes from putting yourself through torture and attempting to learn things that make no sense to begin with? There seems to be no goal to work towards. You're left to put faith in a "religion" that kills and doesn't work. I feel better.
-david.
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Posted Saturday, January 07, 2006 10:34 AM
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Hello dbs521,
I really don't believe much in the prophecy of chinese fortune cookies, but last weekend I opened two fortune cookies and got 3 absolutely amazing fortunes. One cookie had a 2 in one bonus, and they read: "you have an open mind and easily make new friends" "You have an important business development shaping up" and the last one read: "you believe in the goodness of mankind". You may wonder why I bring up chinese fortune cookies, but all three were exactly on the mark for me and my life. Of the three the one that stood out to me the most was the one about having an open mind. In you ventige you expressed the feelings of the same old same old service and routine that CS's go through Sunday after Sunday. What we exers have is the "open mind" to go beyond the bubble. I think this is the core problem with CS people in their bubble.
Toodles,
Frogs25
Fully Relying On God for Salvation
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Posted Saturday, January 07, 2006 5:02 PM
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I agree with you completely, David. Growing up in CS, I never learned basic Christian caregiving. We didn't visit the homebound sick, didn't visit hospitalized non-CS relatives, didn't attend funerals or take food to the bereaved. When my mom was ill, one woman from church brought a casserole one time. This was after my mother, who practically ran the church, had been completely absent from services for at least a year. We did receive cards, however, after she died.... very general "we loved her" statements, and all signed "lovingly". There was no service, at her request. Since she had been a practitioner to so many of them, I wonder what they thought?
In general, we believed we avoided others with problems so as not to pollute our own thought, or add our own perception of "error" and hinder their healing. Well-intentioned, I suppose, but how really cruel in the end.
CS is just so much striving to understand, so much pressure to prove our understanding, and so little to show for it in the end. Why should anything be that complicated? I am so glad now to live in reality, and begin to find some way to understand the obvious...matter is quite real! There is definitely sensation in matter! God loves us as humans!
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Posted Sunday, January 15, 2006 9:26 PM
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It's just a part of the fallen human nature, I suppose. We get comfortable with what is familiar, even if it's not healthy. In various posts over the years I've compared abusive religion to abusive relationships.* You would expect and hope that a person being beaten or otherwise abused would "come to the light," David-dbs521, and get out!
.....But they don't. Why? They misunderstand love, like CS'ists misunderstand faith. They are used to the hurt, desensitized. The situation may be irrational, insane even, but there are subtle rules and expectations that they know and can play by. They are uncertain, even afraid or paranoid, about what is "out there" that you and I would consider healthy.
Maybe this strange, unhealthy relationship/faith/religion and its practices are just somehow burned into their neurological system, and they can't/won't try to rewire it. Incidentally, many women in abusive relationships go on to other abusive relationsips! Irational, ironic, tragic, but true.
Speaking of "brain wiring," I think there may be a similarity with groups like the Hare Krishnas, old-church Catholics, Buddhists, New-Age and/or Transcendental meditators, and so on, which practice long, continuous chanting. They get into a certain mode (zone?) and certain neural pathways are rewarded with endomorphins, soothing and pleasuring them. If they cease the practice, they experience withdrawal. It makes no rational sense, but they swear it is beneficial. I make the comparison, David-dbs521, because you are right: CS is mind-numbingly simplistic. ** It's the same sophomoric stuff, just rephrased over and over again with long sentences, big words, and pseudo-intellectual jargon. But they read it, read it, re-read it, study it again--and, like a meal full of starch and fiber, but no protein, they feel they've taken something in!***
*As a cop, I've dealt with this a lot, especially on the midnight watch. Victims, even when battered, often take the blame and rally to defend the abuser. Parenthetical point: we don't lock up husbands; we lock up boyfriends!!
**Eddy sums up bare-bones CS, reduced to its insanity and inanity, in this passage:
9 The fundamental propositions of divine metaphysics
are summarized in the four following, to me, self-evident
propositions. Even if reversed, these proposi-
12 tions will be found to agree in statement and
proof, showing mathematically their exact relation to
Truth. De Quincey says mathematics has not a foot to
15 stand upon which is not purely metaphysical.
1. God is All-in-all.
2. God is good. Good is Mind.
18 3. God, Spirit, being all, nothing is matter.
4.]]] Life, God, omnipotent good, deny death, evil, sin,
disease.--Disease, sin, evil, death, deny good, omnipo-
21 tent God, Life.
Which of the denials in proposition four is true? Both
are not, cannot be, true. According to the Scripture,
24 I find that God is true, "but every [mortal] man a lair" S&H 113:9-25
Mark Twain skewered this, saying, (paraphrase) "While it is true that all elephants are quadripeds, it does not follow that all quadripeds are elephants." Note she had to doctor Scripture to make it consistent with her doctrine.
***Hence, Carolyn Poole, who founded Christian Way, called it "the cult for the cultured."
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Posted Sunday, January 21, 2007 7:46 AM
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| Dear DBS521, I agree with your comments about the CS service. I've flitted around to different churches in different areas and have always been *stunned* by how much churches have changed in the last 125 years. You mention being a left-brain thinker, but I am a very visual learner, not aural. I have a lot of trouble just sitting and being read to. So many times, as I sit in those services, listening and listening to the Lesson Sermon I think, "I could do this at home and get a lot more out of it." Magnolia
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Posted Friday, April 18, 2008 4:03 AM
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| David: I feel for you. I can feel your pain. I left the Church 34 years ago. Read my story or some of my other posts. 34 years is hardly long-enough so I can't imagine that 5 years away has been a big help. Keep-up the good work. It will take some work but someday I hope you will be able to look back and laugh. IleftCSin74 Mark
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Posted Tuesday, June 03, 2008 4:12 PM
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David,
Really, how does any religion make sense to anyone? I felt comforted by my CS community growing up. When I left, it was because the idea of religion seemed silly, CS is just another odd belief structure among many odd belief structures.
G
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