 Posted Monday, January 30, 2006 8:14 PM
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My name is Sharon. I was raised in the Christian Science Church by a mother who converted to Science shortly after my birth. I have never had an innoculation, never had a polio shot, never was allowed to take a health class. I was one of those kids who had to get up and leave the classroom any time that anything contrary to Christian Science was being taught.
My mother went through class and most of her time was taken up with her Christian Science friends, reading the lesson and discussing whatever Mrs. Eddy said about whatever topic they were on. We had pictures of Mrs. Eddy hanging on the wall in our home. I remember we had a picture of Mrs. Eddy's study in our living room. The Scientific Statement of Being was on the wall in my bedroom and I was required to memorize it. Growing up, Christian Science and "our beloved leader" was something I lived with every day.
As a young mother, I was still very controlled by my mother, but I knew that wanted to have my kids have their innoculations, so I lied to my mother about it, sneaking around to get my kids to the doctor. And at one point, when I became deathly ill with what turned out to be gallbadder problems, I stayed home as I had attack after attack, letting the practitioner work for me until my husband took me to the hospital and they performed emergency surgery. I remember coming out of the anesthesia only to have my mother in the room telling me that I certainly had a problem with my thinking or this would never have happened to me.
My mother was never very sympathetic towards anyone's illness or just plain bad luck. Her constant statement was "there certainly is something wrong with their thinking!" Then she got old and had to use a walker and I remember she wouldn't go to church because of the walker. I told her that there actually are churches where people would bring you a casserole when you had trouble like that, but of course, not the Christian Science church. That would be actually admitting that something is wrong.
I let my mother take my kids to Sunday School at the Christian Science church, and the result of that now is that I have two grown children that are just as screwed up with religion as I am.
I feel like I have been searching for years now for my "ah ha" moment. I have read every book on Christian Science I could get my hands on. A great book is God's Perfect Child, Living and Dying in the Christian Science Church, written by a woman (Fraser) who was brought up the same way I was.
I actually have joined another church with my husband (Presbyterian), but still I struggle with my faith. I struggle with the idea of Jesus as God. I struggle with the idea that he died on the cross to "save" me from my sins, because I still struggle with the fact of being a sinner.
Not too long ago I found myself at the Christian Science church I grew up in. I don't even know why I went there, but I happened to be driving by on my way to the Presbyterian church and I was early. I noticed people going in and I just parked and went in to church. There were only about 15 people in a church that used to be full every Sunday. I knew I didn't belong there, but where do I belong?
My mother passed away about 2 years ago. She was at our local hospice for the last couple of days and the night before she died I asked her if she wanted me to read the lesson. She did and I did. I kept thinking "I don't believe I am doing this", but I read it. And the last words my mother said to me were "if you would get yourself back into the church you belong in, you would make a very good reader".
Talk about last words!!
I am so very hopeful that as I read through these messages, I will find the help and the comfort I so desperately need in my spiritual life.
Sharon
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Posted Monday, January 30, 2006 9:14 PM
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Welcome, Sharon!
Thank you so much for sharing your story with us. You have come to a place where people understand your background and can personally relate to much of what you said. I hope we will be an encouragement to you.
I also struggled with the doctrinal concepts you mentioned when I first came out of CS, but now they all seem very natural to me. Let us help you with this -- perhaps a good place to start is the CS and the Bible section of the CWay web site. Let us know if we can help you in specific ways.
I'm off to bed now but just wanted to say hi!
Linda
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Posted Tuesday, January 31, 2006 9:12 AM
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Thank you so much. Right now I am on my way to work, but I stopped to see if I had a reply to my message. Then, I got engrossed in the personal stories. So much resonates with me. Kathy House, telling of being left alone locked in a house while her mother went to church.....I was left standing on the street waiting for my mother many times, as she got engrossed talking Christian Science with one of her mentors. It never mattered whether it was hot, or cold, or how long I stood there. And....if she saw I had been crying, I really would hear about being afraid and how my allowing fear in my mind would make something happen to me.
Now, to this day, I am afraid of being afraid. It sounds nuts to put it down in print. But, in raising my children, whenever I experienced fear of any kind about their well-being, I then would think "now, I have caused that to happen". It was a never ending circle of fear and denial.
I find it hard to be sympathetic to illness of any kind, including my own, and I am scared to death of doctors. Right now, my family doctor has ordered an EKG for me just for an annual physical and I am scared to death to have it, feeling that my own fear of it will cause me to have a heart problem, and that if I have to have some sort of procedure, I will die on the table (that being because "doctors actually kill more people than Christian Science.")
I think, in addition to struggles with Christianity, we former CS members struggle with many issues dealing with mind control of many years, and most of them our very formative years.
Thank you folks so much for this web site. I hope it just grows and grows. I know it will be such a help to me, as it is virtually impossible for anyone to understand unless they have been through it. My husband, who totally embraces Jesus as his saviour without question, can sympathize, but does not really understand me when it comes to questions of religion. For many years I would have called myself a sceptic or an agnostic, but then I KNOW that I need God in my life.
Sharon
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Posted Tuesday, January 31, 2006 9:55 AM
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Welcome, Sharon Marie!! We are pleased to have you. Know too that there are many of us who know what you have gone through and continue to go through. You are among friends!!!
I will certainly pray for you in your walk. Feel free to share you thoughts and feelings at anytime.
Blessings in Christ,
John
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Posted Tuesday, January 31, 2006 10:04 AM
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Hi Sharon,
Welcome to the Forum, and it is so good to have you here, too.
Yes, I agree, it does take years to unlearn the many things you know from CS, and I am still amazed that what sticks the most are things which cause us to fear whenever we now do something that is usually not done by a CSists. Just shows you how indoctrinating CS is and how many of the rules and teachings are actually used to keep their members well within the CS belief system.
Though I became a CSist at 27 only, and left it when I was 40, and found Jesus when I was 42 (just last Sunday submitted my official membership application to the local presbyterian church - my first church membership after CS!), I once said the CS teachings are similar to hydra-heads. Even now when I have a glass of wine in a restaurant I sometimes think "hopefully no church member sees me drinking ....". I usually only have one glass, so I'm not drunk or anything, it's just one of the CS remainders that we shouldn't have alcohol.
The very best part about biblical christianity is that YOU DON'T HAVE TO DO THE WORK. God loves and accepts you just as you are right now, while he is fully aware of the fact that we are all sinners. When we now do something we must not do it to earn salvation. In fact, however hard we might work, we could not even earn a fraction of salvation through our works or intended good conduct. Whatever we do, we may do it out of gratitude only. I think for me this was the hardest to understand and whenever I understand it a little bit better huge waves of gratitude just fill me, and at the same time fill me with waves of love and compassion for others and remove criticism and a tendency to be judgmental.
God bless you!
Marion
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Posted Tuesday, January 31, 2006 10:54 AM
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1Tim 5:23--"Drink no longer water, but use a little wine for thy stomach's sake and thine often infirmities."
Spring:
Not only did the Bible say under some conditions it was OK to consume wine(in this instance, St. Paul to Timothy), but to use it as a medicine for the physical body!!! 'Pretty hard for CS to countermand that passage, isn't it?
I say this as someone who is a non drinker, except for taking wine as the blood with the body on Sunday.
John
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Posted Tuesday, January 31, 2006 3:32 PM
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By the way, there is no biblical problem that I see with taking a glass or wine at dinner, etc. 'Just wanted to make that clear.
John
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Posted Wednesday, February 01, 2006 9:17 AM
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Welcome, Sharon.
Your story is very, very similiar to mine. We, too, had framed pictures of Mrs. Eddy, the Mother Church, and one of her homes displayed on our walls. I had her Children's Prayer over my bed. I'm sure we owned every biography and every text, and we subscribed to the newspaper and every single periodical! My mother gave subsciptions to the periodicals to others constantly. She read the lesson to us every morning while we ate breakfast. She idolized her teacher to the extent that, for many years, she corresponded with him weekly, seeking his opinion on every issue in her life and that of our family. These were saved in a notebook. I couldn't read them for years after her death, and when I did they nauseated me. They were so full of "gentle" admonishments to her that she must have spent years concealing guilt over healings she could not achieve. I ceremoniously burned them all a year ago, along with her class notes...which seemed to focus exclusively on animal magnetism.
My childhood, too, was truly affected by Christian Science. I can look back now and see how odd it was that, as a girl, I almost never cried. It has only been in the last decade that I have been able to truly let go. We were told when we were hurt that there was "no sensation in matter", and little if any sympathy was ever given. In every other way, my mother was one of the warmest, happiest and most loving women I have ever known. But anything to do with sickness, accidents, or negative emotions would pull us right into the structure of CS where to admit or recognize anything other than perfection left us open to personal blame and responsibility. This was not just a family thing...this was the culture of CS. Practitioners regularly asked me if there was anything in my thinking that needed to be "uprooted". As a child, I literally became afraid of my own thoughts. This was a very vicious circle.
As a child, I was completely unable to tell my mother if I was afraid of, or nervous about, anything. I spent half of my third grade year terrified of a mean student teacher, and never once told my parents why I was sick before school every morning. My mother finally "handled" the problem by calling my regular teacher and telling her that the next time I got sick in class, she was to take me out into the hall and firmly tell me that I was not ill, that this was "error" and I needed to stand porter at the door of thought. This woman, who must have had to take notes to get this all straight, tried her best to carry out this bizarre cure by walking me down the hall to the prinicpal's office practically screaming at me that my mother had said I was not sick at all and had a problem in my head. I was eight years old, and I can still remember walking down that hall feeling as if I was in another world with no one at all for comfort.
I believe that there are many of us who were raised this way, and that damage was done. I, too, am terrified of medical treatment. I have finally accepted that this will be an issue for me for the rest of my life.
I like what Marion said, and would add that it also helps so much to remember that God knows our pain and He cares. He sees our hurts and is there to walk through them with us. Again, welcome.
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Posted Wednesday, February 01, 2006 10:33 AM
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SharonMarie (and all others) you don't know how much your stories help me in dealing with my sometimes CS husband and very devout CS in-laws. My SIL lost a TON of weight a few years ago and when I tried asking about it it was like nothing had happened! Each time one of you shares one of your stories it helps me understand another part of my husband so for that I thank you so very much.
My husband and I have been having many of the discussions that you mention. He can't believe that every Christian religion (other than CS) believes in the divinity of Jesus Christ. But he has been so very open to the discussions lately. I was actually on the kitchen floor on my knees the other morning praying for the Spirit to open his heart, mind and ears to the truth and within 2 hours we were having a very open discussion about the divinity of Jesus and how the bible says that. He was very skeptical of course, but he listened. When he went back to work I was jumping around the house praising God and thanking the Holy Spirit for giving me wisdom and holding my tongue to not compare CS with Jehovah Witness or Mary Baker Eddy wit Joseph Smith!
So keep telling your stories and let the healing power of God do the rest.
Confused Wife
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Posted Wednesday, February 01, 2006 7:48 PM
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