In 1866, Mary Baker Eddy took a pretty bad spill and prayed herself back
to heath. Then, as any logical person
would do, she spun that into a book deal and a new religion. A religion were Jesus is not only the Son of
God, he is also a podiatrist, surgeon, gynecologist, and general
practitioner. Impressive right? We’ll if you’d like to learn how one God can
pull all of that off, you can read Mary’s book, Science and Health, I
perused it during the service, and let me assure you it is jam packed with science
and health. I now have a solid
foundation in quantum mechanics and know the difference between a zygote and a
gamete.
“Christian
Science is sometimes confused with Scientology, faith healing, New Age
practices, and Eastern religions. It has also been called un-Christian or
labeled a cult. Actually, Christian Science is none of the above,” according to
their website. We’ve all seen a four-month-old
copy of the Christian Science Monitor in the lobby of a Jiffy Lube or
passed by a Christian Science reading room, but we deiced to learn more in week
#19 Church of Christ Scientists Fairfax, VA.
There is an episode of Family Guy where a little boy is
visiting Stewie and falls really ill, Lois takes him to the hospital and learns
he has some terrible yet curable disease.
When the little boy’s parents hear he is at the hospital they freak out
and explain that they are Christian Scientists, and believe they can pray him
to health. Some other stuff happens-maybe
Peter fights a giant chicken in a ridiculously extended combat scene or there
is a cutaway to a Conway Twitty song.
Regardless, then the Griffin family kidnaps the boy to get him medical
care, I think, and in the end Lois convinces the family that God had answered
their prayer for their son’s health in the form of modern medicine. Before today, that is about all we knew of
Christian Science.
The actual principles of the religion make sense. They believe in the divine love of God, and
the power of that love; as well as the concept that the laws of matter yield to
the laws of the mind. Sidebar, none of this is new, Hindus came up with this
philosophy thousands of years ago, but some white lady says it and Americans
fall in line. Christian Science folks also believe that prayer results in
healing because everyone is connected with God, and that God is wise and kind
and would never cause sickness or sin.
Since God is all-powerful and ever present, why can’t he cure cancer? It is not that far out there, but that seems
to be the issue with a lot of religions.
They take some simple, believable truths (likely stolen from an ancient
culture) about the nature of God and our existence and crazy it all up by
taking it to the extreme. I too agree
that medicine is handed out like Skittles in the country, and doctors would be
better off prescribing broccoli and jogging to 90% of their patients. Trust me, Brian is so sick of me telling him
to drink water every time he complains of a headache, but it works. I will also never argue with the power of
prayer or meditation (hell I’m at yoga four days a week), I think it works…just
not on AIDS. You need drugs to fix
AIDS. Do you think Magic Johnson just
prayed more than 80% of the villagers in Zimbabwe…no! He had money to buy drugs, that is why he now
owns a chain of movie theatres and a portion of the LA Dodgers and a whole
generation of Africans are dead. That
was harsh, but needed to make a point.
Health may take more than prayer…in our not so ultraistic society health
takes money. Money you can use to buy
medicine, vegetables, and LA Fitness memberships.
The actual service was not that crazy, unfortunately. There was no new age healing or testimonials
of how prayer mended a hernia. It was more a mixture of incredibly boring with
a bit of creepy thrown in. We were a
minute or two late because I didn’t realize it took 28 minutes to get there
until 25 minutes before the start. The church
was small, with just one aisle and maybe 15 rows of pews that sat about four
people on either side. I would have a
better gauge of this, but Brian walked straight up to the second row for no
real reason, so it was hard to observe anything going on behind us. The walls were white and the altar had
pillars and a wide podium, giving a 17th century Puritan feel. There was an organist who sat facing the
altar and 3 other women on the altar, one standing and reading and two sitting
in chairs. All three were dressed in
outfits that could safely belong to any of the past 3 decades. Not in a bad or particularly good way, but in
the sense that if I showed you a photo of them with no other context and asked
you to guess what year it was taken a fair guess would be anything from 1984 to
1999 to 2013. For all three of them,
that is more the weird part, it was all three.
So when we took our nearly front row seats, the standing
woman was readying from the bible. Once
that was done, it was silent prayer time-for a really long time, like long
enough that we each looked up twice to make sure it was still silent prayer
time, and it was. That was followed by
the Lord’s Prayer with a science twist.
A lot of services say the Lords Prayer, it’s a popular one, but in this
service the parishioners would say one line of the prayer in unison and the
woman at the altar would then provide the Christian Science translation. Allow me to paint a literal picture:
All: “Our Father which art in heaven”
Lady in 80’s outfit: “Our Father-Mother God, all-harmonious”
All: “Hallowed be Thy name”
Lady in 80’s outfit: “Adorable One”
All: “Thy kingdom come”
Lady in 80’s outfit: “Thy kingdom is come; thou art
ever-present”
… for the rest of the prayer. It is from as they called her in the service
“Ms. Baker Eddy’s” book. Apparently she
translated some parts of the bible.
The prayer was followed by a hymn; the lady gave us the hymn
number, like is typically done, but before the crowd stood to sing, she read
the entire first verse. Like “please
open to #431 in your hymnal and now I will recite in a normal non-singing voice
the first 10 lines you’re about to sing.”
Then we stood and sang it to traditional church organ music. This was followed by church announcements,
and then of course the weekly solo. One
of the two seated ladies stood from her chair and began an operatic solo in an
octave I cannot even name. She was
wearing a knee length long sleeve royal blue knit dress with large gold buttons
from the neck to the hem. She was
slender and tall making the dress seem boxy on her frame. As she nearly
shattered the windows with each high note, all I could think was, is this dress
from Nordstrom’s Spring collection or JC Penny’s Fall 1987 clearance rack…I
couldn’t place it. I know this is
shallow, but her passion for the song and my second row seat for it somehow made
me uncomfortable, and I deal with my insecurities by judging others so live
with it. Anyway, it was an intense solo,
but my favorite part was that once she hit the last note she turned and
immediately exited out of a door behind the altar. She sat there for the first part of the
service, preformed the first scene of an opera, and was out; no time for
applause. It was the church equivalent
of dramatically dropping the mic, and I’m out!
Then, I hate to say, it got boring. The Christian Science
folks don’t believe there is any need for preaching or sermons apart from what
is in the Bible and Mary Baker Eddy’s text, so for the next what felt like 3
hours, the third lady stood beside the other standing lady, and they alternated
readings from the bible and Science and Health. The bible readings focused on the miracle
workings of Jesus, the loaves and fishes one, the bringing the man back from
the dead…and so on. There was also a
focus on God’s love and all that jazz, but honestly I missed the alternative
Christian rock of the local mega church.
I was hoping for something a bit more out there, I wanted some healing,
but I guess if healing is just praying, they delivered.
God’s love is powerful, I’m not denying that, but if I break
my arm I’m still going to the hospital, and I’ll pray the ER waiting room is
empty and free of TB, but bring on the morphine. My seven minutes of web research indicates
that Mary Barker Eddy would have followed my example. Evidently she was married
3 times, losing one husband to yellow fever, and although she couldn’t keep a
husband she could keep down a pill. Apparently
she was addicted to morphine for a good chunk of her life and had her own kid
vaccinated. Even though the idea that
Jesus can heal all ills seems to work for her 100,000 or so followers, at one
point Mrs. Eddy sued the city where she fell- claiming she was "still suffering
from the effects of that fall."
Indicating once again that money has the most healing power of all. I’m not trying to pass judgment on Christian
Science, they obviously have a very successful news publication, I’m just not
sure I’d recommend sending your kind to a Christian Science summer camp, he may
come home with yellow fever or polio.
