Christian Science children must live with a belief system that tells them that their bodies, and the world around them, are not real. This is an abstract concept, difficult for a child to understand. It can produce both guilt and confusion in a child who feels pain but must deny it and who must learn to reinterpret events that seem very real.

Janet describes her confusion:

“I was sitting in a Sunday School class at a table by the window. I remember my teacher saying that the table we were sitting at was unreal and only an illusion. So was the tree outside the window. I remember thinking that they look pretty real to me, but that I better not tell anyone what I was thinking or they would think I was spiritually inferior.”[i]

In her book, Blue Windows: A Christian Science Childhood, Barbara Wilson also comments on the denial of reality that Janet described, and she brings up an interesting irony:

“But I did know, without understanding, that you had to have a thing in front of you to realize that it was not really a thing. You had to see a bird to know it wasn’t there.”[ii]

Christian Science teaches that the bird will seem real as long as we believe in a material world. Most children recognize that they haven’t overcome their belief in matter, so they sit at their non-existent tables and climb those trees that, in God’s true creation, are merely an illusion. But a lot of them experience the confusion that Janet and Barbara described. Somewhere, deep inside, there’s a conflict that they may or may not recognize – and would probably deny – if you mentioned it. It’s difficult to embrace your humanity, or yourself, when you can’t accept that you have a body. I experienced that conflict. I would have laughed at the suggestion of an internal struggle if you had mentioned it to me while I was in Christian Science. But my conflict became clear after I left the group and, with great effort, I had to give myself permission to have a body.

As I said before, Christian Science children often feel guilty when they are sick or injured. These feelings are spawned not only by Christian Science doctrine, but also, frequently, by well-meaning caregivers. Some children are scolded and even punished for becoming ill or for not being able to heal themselves. Others are left alone and frightened while their parents go into another room to pray. Some are given the option of medical care, but with guilt or fear attached.

·         Carolyn went through a series of severe ear infections at the age of seven. As she sat on her mother’s lap and cried in pain, her mother told her that earaches were “not real, because god didn’t make them.” Carolyn was treated by a Christian Science practitioner rather than with antibiotics – and went deaf. Then her mother told her, “If you would be more loving, you could hear.” Carolyn later said, “That made me feel like I was the worst, most evil person in the world because no matter how hard I tried to ‘be loving,’ good, and nice, I couldn’t hear.”[iii]

·         Beth put her hand through a glass door and cut it to the bone, leaving her fourth finger hanging backwards. Her mother, a Christian Science practitioner, blamed the accident on Beth’s “evil thoughts.”  She told Beth to raise the bleeding hand above her head and commanded her not to faint. After driving an hour toward home, Beth’s mother stopped at a pay phone and spent another thirty minutes consulting with a practitioner friend. Beth sat in the car as the women talked – alone, bleeding, frightened, and in pain. Beth’s mother finally decided to have a doctor bandage the hand in a cupped position to stop the bleeding. There were no stitches or painkillers. She then became angry when Beth needed help getting dressed because of the bandage.[iv]

·         In her article, “Suffering Children and the Christian Science Church,” Caroline Fraser describes her difficulties with repeated carsickness as a young child. She would desperately try to heal herself but would invariably throw up anyway – at which point her father would yell, “you’re going to have to learn not to do that!”[v]

·         One little girl was dying of untreated throat cancer and couldn’t swallow properly because of the lump in her throat. Her mother forced her to eat anyway and punished her for throwing up.

·          Lisa’s family refused to acknowledge that she was dying of cystic fibrosis. She was never given the emotional support that any human being would need under the circumstances. A few days before her death she was still being propped up at the dinner table, semi-conscious, so that her family could eat together.

·         Mary stepped on a needle that broke off and left a one-inch segment in her foot. Her mother offered to have it removed by a doctor but made the offer with the frightening statement, “We can take you to the doctor and he’ll take a knife and cut it out, or we can ‘know the Truth’ about it.” Mary had never heard of anesthetics and imagined a wild man slicing into her foot, so she opted for knowing the Truth. She continues, “So for a week or two I limped around…while the needle worked its way from near my toes to eventually come out at the heel. I was called to the phone every day or so to talk to a practitioner who assured me that there was no reality to the situation....” 

The cases I have discussed bring up a serious issue that undermines the self-confidence and emotional health of many Christian Science children – the need for validation. The gut-level desire for one’s emotions, senses, and needs to be taken seriously. Just watch a group of young children on a playground if you want to understand the importance of validation. When children hurt themselves, they run to their parents to have the pain acknowledged. Often a child simply shows the bump to her mother, receives a kiss and some loving words regarding the injury, and then happily returns to her game. The love and kiss cannot heal the bump, but they are so important to the child that she will often cry and act hurt until she receives them. This desire to have pain acknowledged is almost universal among children and adults. Christian Scientists deprive themselves and their children of this basic human need because they cannot admit that pain is real. I have discussed the validation issue with a number of people who grew up in Christian Science and have seen many of them reduced to tears as they think about their own experience.

Children can suffer emotional neglect even if they don’t go through blatantly abusive situations like the ones I have just described. My parents were very open to discussing my problems, and I knew that they loved me unconditionally. But whenever we would discuss a physical problem I was having, my father would end the conversation with “but we know that this is no part of you.” (In other words, we know that the “real you” isn’t having a problem.) With that well-meaning statement, any gut level validation I had received would vanish. It took me years to figure out why, deep down inside, I felt so horribly alone.

Aside from their own pain, Christian Science children must often endure the prolonged suffering of loved ones without having any means of expressing or understanding their emotions. They know that illness is “wrong.” They cannot ask questions about it lest they make it harder to heal, so are left with no good way to deal with their fears. People often die without explanation, and children are left with lingering questions about what happened. And when their loved ones die, they don’t know how – or are often not allowed – to grieve.

Suzanne recalls how her grandfather was kept on a cot in the basement when he developed open, rotting sores – one of which ate a hole through his cheek so that she could see his teeth, tongue, and jaw. He died when she was eight years old, but she was not allowed to grieve.[vi]

Despite the confusion, guilt, and poor validation, Christian Science children often lead happy lives because their religion teaches them to be optimistic and to see themselves as spiritually perfect, religiously superior, and able to overcome life’s “seeming” trials. They are taught to live simultaneously in two realities; they play, eat, and experience the ups and downs of life in the physical illusion around them while metaphysically filtering out the unpleasant aspects of their lives. In other words, they learn to live with selective denial and to consciously internalize only the good in life. That works to a point, but Christian Scientists often grow up with insecurities and emotional scars that could have been avoided by acknowledging and dealing with life’s problems as they arose instead of brushing them under the metaphysical rug. Some people struggle with the scars for a lifetime without understanding their origin. Others never recognize the damage, but it leaks out in the form of insecurity, a general lack of empathy, and emotional difficulties such as misplaced anger. I’ve seen this in many people – including the ones who swear that Christian Science didn’t harm them.

In my case, I led a happy childhood and then experienced tremendous emotional fallout after leaving Christian Science and beginning to examine my past without any metaphysical filters. I had to sort through a lifetime of confused and angry emotions, dealing with events ranging from minor inconveniences to major traumas. I was truly surprised at the intensity of my anger over certain events, and am convinced that they would have been less traumatic if I had been allowed to deal with them as they happened, instead of years later and with a mass of other memories.

       It breaks my heart to read these things. I was going to be raised a Christian Scientist because it was my father's belief system, but then he had an allergic reaction to something and was in an iron  lung in Korea so he decided against it. There is a lot of the issue of lack of emotional presence in my family now and many generations back. It is hard to form a healthy and well defined character without that, as I am sure you know. If God wants to be with us, bring us into the fold, He must want us to be present for each other. That is one of the things I did love about my nursing career. I think Christian Science does give a sense of a security blanket, a safe nest especially to people who have had lack of support and serious hardship. What comes after that I'm not sure.

Thank you for the very thorough post about the emotional damage done to many of us as the children of Christian Science.  I think your comment about feeling alone touched me.  I never was allowed to discuss any problem or any illness.  The reply to me was just to "know the truth" and I would get over it.  And the fear of going to the doctor stays with me to this day.  I remember reading Fraser's book where she said that her friends all had memories of staying home from school when they were sick.  They were tucked into bed, given books to read and loving mothers who checked their temperatures etc.  I was forced to go to school sick and if I threw up and my mother was called, she would be angry when she picked me up. 

It's such an emotionally abusive way to bring up a child and continues to touch our lives even after we leave the church.  In my life, it reflects in my inability to acknowledge my own weaknesses and the weakness or illness of others.  I simply have no empathy for anyone's illness or bad fortune, including my own.  Underneath it all, I still feel that whatever happpens is my fault or the fault of others thought process.  And even though I know that is not true, it doesn't stop that voice inside my head from saying "straighten up your thinking". 

As to the refusal to allow grief, I also struggle with that.  I can cry when someone I love dies, but then I expect myself to just "get over it".  I remember when my grandmother died when I was eight years old and the only way I knew about it was hearing my mother call an old friend as I hid on the stairs.  Otherwise, it was never mentioned.  My mother was my grandmother's only child and it was as if she never existed. 

These things hang on and even though many of us can acknowlege the long term psychological effects, still acknowledging and changing are two different things.  Myself, I am angry at what I endured, as you said feeling "alone". 

sharon

I've re-read through some of your posts & they are testimony to the pain Christian Science is capable of inflicting upon even those who have never personally professed it themselves. As Linda has pointed out, the children of Christian Scientists are its most hapless victims, as they often become mere pawns in emotionally detached adults' attempts to deny basic realities. Back in 2006, you closed your personal story as follows:    

Thank you so much for your powerful words.  You have said it all....

in the light