 Posted Tuesday, April 21, 2009 10:42 PM
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hi all ,
new here, thought i could share my experiences of CS and how im feeling right now about it. im open to change which is why i find this site interesting, i always hope to see all sides of a debate, hope i can learn stuff here too.
i was brought up a christain in a baptist church, i never felt forced to beleive in god or jesus i just always felt it right because i felt good going to church, it was this i based my faith on , how i felt, and i guess that is all anyone can do?
ive always considered myself a christain as ive accepted christ, and i feel i understand his relevance in my life and also at a much deeper fundemental level.
there have been times ive not gone to church, for years, and many trials and times i have sinned , and tested god and my faith. i've attended several denominational churchs, and realized the many differing views even within the christan church which i find very sad even today.
i last attended a pentecostal church and although i understood where they were coming from it still got too 'happy clappy' for me , and i am very understanding and open minded.!!
i have always felt close to god from a child, i feel deeply for life and all humanity, and my god has never failed me when i have sought him in earnest. yet i have always felt a lack in churches ive attended, a lack at the root understanding of christianity itself, the fundementals behing christ and the diveine. it was here that i found CS answering mant of my questions.
with no doubt CS is difficult to understand, it appears contradictory if not studied, but i have prayed many times that if this is wrong that i should be led away from CS, i have had no such yearnings to do so. inteasd i find CS properly undertsood to be compatible with whati understand Christ to be. people must understand that CS is based on Metaphysical principles, this kind of thinking and inquiry is enough to drive anyone crazy if not properly understood. i really do feel cS makes sense, it has strenghted me no end , mentally , physiclally and emotionally, i have become a better person, with a deper understanding of the nature of christ. it has taken nothing from my christian beliefs but only illuminated my doubts as to jesus being my saviour.
i have also studied buddhism, and zen, and read all manner of religious texts, many of these ancient religions point to the metaphysical origions of our true existence. our true nature is spiritual, this is not against christianity , we war against the flesh constantly. i refuse to force this religion down anybodys throat so to speak, i beleive that you should walk the walk, if you talk the talk, you cannot argue with truth, you cannot argue against health, CS facinates still today.
i sadly feel that many christians despite thier christain faith and love are still blinded in this material world. this is exactly what jesus came to free us from , our blindness to the ultimate unreality of matter, of the flesh, of this illusiory world, this is not new ideas even for christianity. christ crucified in the flesh showed us he was spirit, that he is eternal, that our life here is nothing .
are we not meant to die and be reborn as christians?
i would love to discuss further with anyone interested, ive heard many criticizms over the years against CS but to this day i am happy , healthy and hopefully will remain this way. i have felt enlightened by studying CS on many occasions and i haved experienced god's love like when i was a child, peace , warmth, and joy from my increaed undertstanding.
i would be particularlyinterested to hear from any christains who have prayed about CS and the responses they have felt layed on their hearts. i believe this must be the ultimate test for any set of beliefs/religon.
hope i get to speak to some of you soon.
god bless
ciao
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Posted Wednesday, April 22, 2009 6:51 AM
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Dear anonymous,
Thanks for your honesty, and questions.
Say, for ease of conversing, what name would you like folks to use? There are lots of good folks out there logging in anonymously, and it tends to get confusing. I'll bet you're going to hear a lot of responses. Also if you want to correspond by messages more privately (within this site), you'll need a name if you want folks to be able to write back to you. I've already gotten something from one anonymous, and can't respond unless I do it publicly, which isn't always appropriate.
The thing that comes to mind, is context. If you're evaluating anything that claims to be based on Bible, there should be healthy respect for context, whenever they're quoting from it or teaching from it's principles. That's a pretty good guide for telling the true teachers from the false ones. I suspect you value truth highly, from what you've said. I know I do. If someone were going to teach me about any religion, I'd go to their sources, and verify that they're using them honestly. If not, I'd want a different teacher. Nothing's worse than having to stay on guard constantly because a guide has a tendency to stretch the truth.
Spiritual interpretation is a whole other bag of worms... so to speak. Some folks take free license, and anything is liable to be interpreted ... and not necessarily with respect for the context! I think there's room for conscience there, and also testing the stuff that comes to mind. When fragments of Bible quotes would come to mind, as a child I'd go off with my Concordance and word search until I found the one -and get the rest of the story. I found I was always blessed by the additional inspirations that piled on. You might like that for a mental discipline. It keeps us from floating too far away from the original intent. It also helps with the underlying thought. Those inspirations come to us for a reason.
Inspiration can be a very good thing, but it needs to pass some tests. I like St. John's instructions to "try [as in test] the spirits" -I Jn 4:1. There is such a thing as a deceiving spirit. I Tim 4 deals with this. All inspiration comes from somewhere, and the responsibility each of us has includes making sure we aren't accepting falsehood in the place of truth. II Peter 2 has some more warnings and wisdom along these lines.
I know that many in CS believe it to be helpful to read S&H through on a yearly basis (besides the regular lesson). I did, though not that often. However, I also reasoned that I should be reading the Bible, or at least the New Testament, at least as many times. So I did. The JBPhillips translation is sold in the CSRR, and is as good as any, besides being in modern English. That's important. You might enjoy NIV also, but especially one with a Study Bible format. The footnotes are often about the original language, and nuances that may be hard to convey in the text. It really helps a lot. New Jerusalem Bible is also a good translation, and there are others.
My point is, it's easier to catch the counterfeit if you know what the original is supposed to look like. Familiarity with the Bible itself will eventually start sending up the warning flags, whenever you hear it misused, from the readings you've befriended. Lest anyone take offense, the Bible is so complex that daily study, for decades (lifetimes) would still yield fresh inspiration and something to learn. No other book is as deep or intricate. Wisdom is like that. So too is true inspiration. It's alright to let the Bible speak to us without outside interpretation. Let it simply speak for itself.
The reason I left CS after 28 years of living it, was due to falsehoods and twistings of Bible meanings. I didn't leave from failures to demonstrate it, or for reasons of corruption in others or sin in myself either. I had eaten it up and was praying through things both in my sleep and awake. I'd gained a lot of self-control, and other things by its practice and discipline. In fact there are things I survived that medicine and psychology would have been hard pressed to equal. Even so, I have to say, God led me out of it. There IS good reason to be away from it. It's not pure. If I'm going to hail something as the Second Coming, it better be true to the original! I only agreed to follow CS as far as it followed Christ, as MBE challenged twice in Prose Works. Obviously, the time came when I could see where and how it didn't follow Christ -and it was time to move on.
Finding Truth in a confusing world is a challenge. Fortunately, God is also searching for us. Our hearts know heaven when we sense it. It's the only place we're really at home... and well worth the search!
There's often a lot more to the Christian Church than we see in our growing up years. The depth is amazing; and I find it overshadows the distinctions of the denominations. I'm Christian first of all because I follow Christ. The church I go to during the week is secondary to that. All fellow-Christians become my family, by what Jesus said. All the love in heaven is ours for his sake too. I find great comfort in that. Then comes the responsibility to live like I know it. That means finding mentors. So I read old and new books, written by those who felt the weight of the cross, and learned to live it with joy.
God is good.
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Posted Wednesday, April 22, 2009 11:20 AM
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| Welcome "new here" Thanks for sharing your story with us. You seem to be a sincere seeker of truth, with a deep trust and love for God. Don't measure the worth of any church by the behavior of individual members. There are always those who don't live up to the ideals of their professed faiths. But, I've known plenty of CSists who were genuinely good people, living good Christian lives, and I know plenty of people from a lot of other faiths I would describe exactly the same way. christ crucified in the flesh showed us he was spirit, that he is eternal, that our life here is nothing .
are we not meant to die and be reborn as christians? I have to respectfully disagree with you on part of that point. Our life here, on this earth, is meaningful. Speaking to Nicodemus, and all of us by association, Jesus did say: “Ye must be born again.” --this in addition to, not in place of our birth in the flesh. Our purpose in this life is to Glorify God: For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God's. [1 Cor 6:20] I've always subscribed to the Biblical directive to "Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling." I don't think that means we have to live running scared, but the 'fear and trembling' aspect merely underlines the grave importance of this individual quest for salvation. It is not something we take lightly. Religion and Church provide wonderfully nurturing communities to help us in our individual journeys, so we need to carefully select our church as we would our closest friends. I would not presume to tell you or anyone which church to select. This choice is a personal decision and a personal responsibility. I'm here sharing my views as a former CSist, because I hope that others might benefit from my experience, and maybe avoid some of the mistakes I've made. I once thought as you, that CS was a true Christian Church, and that it required deep study to fully understand this religion. But if you follow that line of reasoning far enough, what you are really saying is that everyone who doesn't agree with CS is not smart enough to really understand it. Some might find that kind of argument insulting. At first glance, CS seems to be a form of Christianity. There is no argument; it does have Christian components: love, salvation, humility, service. It is based on the Bible. It claims to follow the teachings of Jesus Christ who is described by CS as the Son of God, but not God, the "best man who ever trod the earth, the one who best exemplified the Christ. Nonetheless, Jesus is described as just a man, albeit, a man with a dual nature: one, spiritual and the other, material. At the same time, considerable argument is made that man is purely spiritual, and that he is not material at all. CS claims to restore a lost element of Christianity, the primitive healing power practiced by Jesus over 2000 years ago. At the same time, many CSists quote MBE stating that healing is the smallest part of CS. Yet that healing practice is what is most often used to promote CS. And this healing practice wields a two-edged sword that also graphically demonstrates the grave danger in the practice of CS: practical martyrdom for the cause. Sure, CS makes sense at some level, but how do you account for the inconsistencies on the practical level? Let me assure you, it is not for lack of study. This is where real critical thinking could offer a few answers. Consider this: Mrs. Eddy herself, at the pinnacle of her understanding of CS, died of a disease. According to church records well documented by Robert Peale's three-volume biography of MBE (which is the definitive record according to the CS Church) she was sick for 9 days before her death, and critically ill for the last 48 hours. Can the thinking person draw any conclusions from these facts? We can add several well known CS practitioners and teachers to the list of expert CS metaphysicians who have died in their prime from various sicknesses that CS is supposed to vanquish. And where are the teachers and practitioners of CS today? Why are they not "going about the countryside healing all manner of diseases" ---heart disease, AIDS, MS, ALS, cancers, and the like?
I think what you find in your heart as good in CS can also be found in other faiths. The differences will be in how closely CS and these other faiths follow the Bible. You will find plenty of discussions on that topic throughout this site. Best wishes for your continued study and spiritual growth.
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Posted Wednesday, June 03, 2009 9:11 AM
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It bothers me to read or hear statements that suggest that Christ taught that life here is nothing. I have heard that kind of talk from most of the CSers that I have known, so you can't say that you worded it poorly and meant something else and that if we were smart enough or studied rightly we would understand what was meant!
Besides stating that kind of negation of God's great Gift of Physical Life which you so richly enjoy (I assume you breath beautiful free air, wash your body with fresh clean water, earn beautiful green money to purchase and eat beautiful juicy fresh vegetables, fruits, breads, fish and beans once in awhile and don't live on prayer alone, and you wear nice soft, fuzzy warm clothes, and hug your friends and family members once in awhile, thus enjoying some of the physical nothingnesses that you so fervently insist are unreal) CSers also ACT as if life here is nothing when it comes to PRESERVING it!
Something about the whole insipid CS thing is very scary. In the pit of my stomach there is something about the fact that there is a whole organized, credible looking, determined group of people lurking out there who believe and insist that life here is nothing, just a big mistake and that hygiene and nutritious food is unimportant ... in my mind it really opens the door for treating people like nothing.
People are treated like nothing quite enough already.
There are enough disenfranchised people already whose quality of life is so low because they were born into a greedy, back-turning, heartless dirty, society who ate bad food. Make no mistake, when the quality of life is low the value of life is also very low. And vice versa. It is a full blown mental and emotional disease that ends in early death of millions upon millions of people. Connect the dots. Follow the attitude. Look around us. Our slums, our prisons, our drug addicts, our reservations. Millions of undervalued lives! To not understand the Sacred value human life leads to mental, emotional and physical bondage and death faster than anything else on earth.
People feel worthless enough, they don't take care of their physical bodies or their children's bodies. People aren't even taught that they need to learn how to do such things! The teachings of CS are just complicating/adding more death to the situation.
We need to learn more about how to raise the physical and emotional quality of all life of our city dwellers, our farm workers, our miners, our vetrans, our mothers, fathers, siblings and children. We need to learn many more things about raising the nutritional quality of the world's food and beverage supply, not dismiss it as irrelevant!! We need to raise the standards of medical practices and pharmaceutical products not dismiss them as useless, wrong and ungodly practices perpetrated upon our meaningless, unreal bodies!! Pleeeeeease!
no more CS4me
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Posted Wednesday, June 03, 2009 12:48 PM
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What is real? Revelation speaks of the end of time, and former things passing away? Shouldn't we permit and even encourage an honest search into the meaning of such scripture? It would seem that in light of the following quote by Max Plank that Mary Baker Eddy encouraged this search and could even be seen as ahead of her time with regard to the existence of matter. Can't really fault her for that considering research has proven her to be correct. "As a man who has devoted his whole life to the most clear headed science, to the study of matter, I can tell you as a result of my research about atoms this much: There is no matter as such. All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force which brings the particle of an atom to vibration and holds this most minute solar system of the atom together. We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent mind. This mind is the matrix of all matter." Max Karl Ernst Ludwig Plank
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Posted Thursday, June 04, 2009 11:29 AM
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| Leaner, Interesting question: "What is real?" and its correlative, What is Truth?" These are questions of/for the ages. Certainly, study of the Scriptures is profitable, and to be encouraged by all means... I believe real answers can be found in such study. Certainly Mary Baker Eddy studied the Scriptures, but that doesn't relieve any of us of the responsibility to do our own study. ....Can't really fault her for that considering research has proven her to be correct.
Whoa, excuse me, but what research are you citing as 'proof' of Mary Baker Eddy's concept of matter? Surely not Plank's work or the theories of Schrodinger or Einstein... I'm only slightly amused that someone would claim Eddy was somehow ahead of her time, implying she knew about quantum theory before others published their ideas on the subject. You might more accurately say that Eddy's views on matter and material living are much closer to Plato's 'allegory of the cave'. In this view, Eddy is several centuries behind the times.
Let's start with the facts, or at least what Eddy and Plank are really saying about matter.
Plank, the consummate Christian scientist, does not exactly discount matter. He explains that matter is not a solid object, as it is familiarly thought, but that matter is essentially a construct of atomic force or energy. Plank, a devout Christian, saw faith as the backdrop of all science.
Eddy, the self-described Christian Scientist, does exactly discount matter. She explains that matter is nothing -no thing. Atoms are nothing -no thing. All is Spirit. And the only true science is Christian Science. That is quite different from what Plank was saying.Of course, the problem with Eddy's definition of matter is in its practical application. If you ignore matter because Eddy tells you it is insubstantial, you might not avail yourself of a life-saving material cure for what ever ails you. If you apply Plank's description of matter, you might get a deeper understanding of physical cause and effect, --a better understanding of the practical world.
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Posted Friday, June 05, 2009 11:06 AM
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Sorry, I'm having a bit of a problem distinguishing between Plank's assertion that matter doesn't exist and Eddy's that it's unreal..doesn't exist, unreal...unreal, doesn't exist,...weighs the same to me,...a rose by any other name is still a rose...I suppose.
But still, take the one that's comfortable, and accepting the conclusion that matter is something other than reality, which I have, and I've wondered,...what would I spend my time and money on if I didn't have to obey the demands of a matter based body? What would I think about if I didn't have a matter based body?
Perhaps you don't find things like this interesting, but I do. That's the glorious thing about freedom. We can choose to ponder, wonder, pursue, and hope according to our individual aspirations.
And pursuing the possibility of the non-existence of a matter based body, St. John in Revelation saw the new heaven and new earth with no temple therein. Jesus referred to body as temple so I can reason that John was saying there is no matter based body in his vision. Also, John saw this vision in this present stage of human existence and again this suggests to me that it's possible for all mankind to experience the same vision here and now. Then it only makes sense to me that if I'm a serious Christian, and I am, then I have to accept the reality of Spirit and not argue for matter's existence or get caught up in semantics.
And it's curious that you refer to "life-saving material cure for what ever ails you", which I assume you're speaking of modern medicine. Because depending on which medical journal one chooses to believe, they'll find that modern medicine rates between first and third as the leading cause of death in the US, and that even though medical costs in the US far, far, far exceed that of any other nation, life expectancy and infant mortality are falling further behind.
And one more thing, but the Bible says that even Jesus didn't do many mighty works because of their unbelief. Should we not follow Jesus because he failed to heal in some instances? Or should we rather work harder to overcome our "unbelief?"
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Posted Friday, June 05, 2009 11:10 AM
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Anonymous June 5, 2009 @ 2:06:22 PM,
Sorry, I'm having a bit of a problem distinguishing between Plank's assertion that matter doesn't exist and Eddy's that it's unreal..doesn't exist, unreal...unreal, doesn't exist,...weighs the same to me,...a rose by any other name is still a rose...I suppose.
But still, take the one that's comfortable, and accepting the conclusion that matter is something other than reality, which I have, and I've wondered,...what would I spend my time and money on if I didn't have to obey the demands of a matter based body? What would I think about if I didn't have a matter based body?
You, of course, have the freedom to pursue your comfort zone. I wonder, however, what your understanding of your computer, the Internet, and your subsequent freedom to communicate with us in these forums represents? In whose reality are you free?
Do Go Be Man
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Posted Friday, June 05, 2009 11:50 AM
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Sorry, I'm having a bit of a problem distinguishing between Plank's assertion that matter doesn't exist and Eddy's that it's unreal... Let me try to help. Plank did not say "matter doesn't exist" That is what Eddy said. --Plank said: "There is no matter as such." It's the "as such" part that you are missing. It means that matter exists, but not the way it is perceived --not as solid entities --"as such". You can't quote Eddy or Plank out of context and expect to prove anything. And it's curious that you refer to "life-saving material cure for what ever ails you", ......modern medicine rates between first and third as the leading cause of death in the US.. I'm wondering ---are you saying you will refuse insulin shots if you develop diabetes, or you will not accept chloroquine if you contract malaria?...if I'm a serious Christian, and I am, then I have to accept the reality of Spirit and not argue for matter's existence or get caught up in semantics.
Again, are you saying that serious Christians cannot accept the reality of Spirit and matter? Many serious Christians would disagree with you on that. Even John came back to the physical material world after his vision of the new heaven and earth. "For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God's." 1 Cor 6:20
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Posted Friday, June 05, 2009 11:55 AM
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| Sorry Do Go Be Man but I don't follow.
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