 Posted Tuesday, September 09, 2008 8:37 AM
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From my experience, the guy who posted is more severe in his language and the way he expressed his viewpoint than most CSist I know, but he does express the attitude towards medical care. I don't remember that people were judged for seeking medical care, but they were usually put on some kind of membership suspension in the church, spoken of with pity, and avoided until they were "back in the fold". I don't remember harsh condemnation, but I do remember a kind of subtle (or not so subtle) shunning. I remember being told as a child that no one in the church would "work" for my grandmother because she went to have exploratory surgery for her cancer.
If you weren't raised in CS, it's hard to understand how much the culture controls you. What you have heard from childhood from your parents, grandparents, Sunday School teachers, etc., is of course what you accept as true, especially when they have warned you about how other people will try to talk you out of your religion. You are armored and ready for arguments, and are taught to shut them out, so it's nearly impossible to argue a CSist out of their beliefs unless they're already questioning -- and even then, they may get even more defensive. For 22 years, I have been out of the church and considered myself nonpracticing, but still thought it was just me who was unable to stand CS anymore, and I still respected the religion. Well, having found this site, and started reading books by ex-CSists (beginning with Linda's book), and gone on to books on mind control and both authorized and unauthorized biographies of Mrs. Eddy, I still have respect for the many good people I knew in CS, but I no longer have any respect for the church or the religion. It has done more damage than good in too many lives.
Ann
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Posted Tuesday, September 09, 2008 11:58 AM
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A couple further thoughts.
Per practitioners, etc., acting hypocritically in seeking medical treatment, I wonder how many members of TMC who work for TMC in Boston have actually signed up for the church's optional medical (yes,medical) care plan? Wouldn't signing up for such a plan in itself constitute abandonment of "radical means", since it allows for the possibility that TMC members may have to at some point rely on medical instead of spiritual means? How can you have a successful healing if the idea that you have signed up for material means is buried into your spiritual psyche?
Also, I remember reading in Willa Cather's book that MBE taught metaphysical healing, but actually refused to try and do it herself. I am greatly puzzled by this. Why wouldn't the Founder and Discoverer of Christian Science assume the personal role of practitioner? Was she afraid that she might fail, and the implications that would be produced therein? To draw an analogy, can you imagine Dr. Michael DeBakey teaching open heart surgery, but never actually doing the procedures himself? Never in a million years. Why wouldn't MBE apply the same standards to herself that she laid down for practitioners then and now?
John
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Posted Tuesday, September 09, 2008 6:31 PM
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| Do CS's use sunscreen? When I was growing up we did not use it but it was the coppetone era, now with all we know about sun cancer, what do CS;s do about that now. Same with seatbelts, we where actually demonstrating how safe we where! I bet no CS parent would do that today.
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Posted Tuesday, September 09, 2008 7:50 PM
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My family used sunscreen and seatbelts. 
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Posted Tuesday, September 09, 2008 8:54 PM
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Linda,
My family used sunscreen and seatbelts.
Did your house have circuit breakers or fuses to protect against the belief of electrical overload? Surely you did not have a fire extinguisher or first aid kit! I'd wager, however, that your family did not demonstrate freedom from the ultimate medicines of food, water, and air.
Do Go Be Man
<><
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Posted Wednesday, September 10, 2008 6:07 AM
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[Surely you did not have a fire extinguisher or first aid kit! I'd wager, however, that your family did not demonstrate freedom from the ultimate medicines of food, water, and air. I can't remember a first aid kit. But we never became free from that physical crutch called food -- especially ice cream. My dad even had us kids trained to give him a bite of the ice cream cones he bought us every week after church. 
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Posted Wednesday, September 10, 2008 8:19 AM
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Linda,
...we never became free from that physical crutch called food...
Looking back, do you perhaps consider your failure to make the demonstration over food to be a reason you no longer understand Christian Science?
Do Go Be Man
<><
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Posted Wednesday, September 10, 2008 3:11 PM
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Anonymous (9/9/2008)
Also, I remember reading in Willa Cather's book that MBE taught metaphysical healing, but actually refused to try and do it herself. I am greatly puzzled by this. Why wouldn't the Founder and Discoverer of Christian Science assume the personal role of practitioner? Was she afraid that she might fail, and the implications that would be produced therein? To draw an analogy, can you imagine Dr. Michael DeBakey teaching open heart surgery, but never actually doing the procedures himself? Never in a million years. Why wouldn't MBE apply the same standards to herself that she laid down for practitioners then and now?
I just read Cather's book for the first time, and was floored! I know she's been accused of "attacking" Mrs. Eddy, but if even a fraction of all that was true, amazing!
I was also very surprised that she evidently did not take cases on as a practitioner, which I had never heard before. I'm guessing that she did not take cases because she had all that trouble with taking on the client's illness. Which is really weird. I was always taught that that was why she insisted on discontinuing the manipulations (where the early practitioners used to rub people's heads like Quimby did, and Richard Kennedy refused to stop doing that.) I had been taught that physical touch to help healing could result in taking on the symptoms, although if it's all unreal, why would it? But evidently she had a lot of trouble with taking on the symptoms anyway, and kept complaining that her students were thinking about her too much and directing their clients' thoughts towards her, and she was suffering as a result. That's really strange. That was an important part of class instruction, being taught to guard your thoughts against just that kind of "malpractice" or animal magnetism. It never came up then, or at Principia, that I can recall, that MBE couldn't guard her own thoughts in that way. Isn't that really very weird?
Ann
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Posted Wednesday, September 10, 2008 4:12 PM
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| What was that quote from Science and Health that went something like .......(some flowery language for other people's bad thoughts about you) can not go forth like wandering pollen if truth and virtue build a strong defense. Why do these things still float around like "wandering pollen" in my brain? This use to scare me so much. I was afraid to think anything that wasn't virtuous. DENY those evil human emotions! Maybe her taking on other people's illnesses was oh, I don't know, ....could be something called CONTAGION!
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Posted Wednesday, September 10, 2008 7:27 PM
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| Contagion (germs) -- good point... But evidently she had a lot of trouble with taking on the symptoms anyway, and kept complaining that her students were thinking about her too much and directing their clients' thoughts towards her, and she was suffering as a result. That's really strange. That was an important part of class instruction, being taught to guard your thoughts against just that kind of "malpractice" or animal magnetism. Eddy was still concerned about mental malpractice as late as 1908, even among her inner circle of followers. I make the following comments on page 120 of my book, in a discussion of animal magnetism: "The biographers suggest that Mrs. Eddy began to depersonalize animal magnetism as the years went on and began to think of it more as a general state of mortal mind instead of always emanating from individuals (although unwary individuals could be used as instruments of animal magnetism). Despite this depersonalization, its importance in Christian Science theology never really waned. This is illustrated by the “watches” described above, which continued essentially until the end of Mrs. Eddy’s life. It is further indicated by the comments of Martha Wilcox, who joined Mrs. Eddy’s household in 1908. One of the first lessons that Mrs. Eddy gave her was a lesson about mental malpractice. Miss Wilcox made the following comment regarding the lesson: “This lesson on mental malpractice was quite apropos for one entering a household comprised of never less than 17 up to 25 so-called personalities.”20 This is an extremely interesting comment considering the fact that Miss Wilcox was talking about a group of top-notch Christian Scientists, hand picked because of their unusual spirituality and willingness to work together to help their leader. If they needed to guard against each other’s thoughts, then heaven help the rest of us."
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