TruthBook Religious News Blog

A Christian Science perspective on daily life.

from the June 24, 2008 edition

Is childbirth solely a physical event requiring a medical environment? In the United States today, over 99 percent of all births occur in a hospital setting; 97.5 percent in Britain. Consequently, the dominant view – at least in those countries – leans heavily toward the physical, medical, technological, and human emotion aspects of birth.

But there's more to bringing a child into the world. There's a spiritual dimension that, like the spiritual realities of life itself, needs to be more widely understood – for humanity's health and welfare.

Let's examine some of the common fears that would draw thought toward a strictly material concept of birth and consider how to address them prayerfully.

Pregnancy and childbirth are physical events, involving material growth and development:

When it is clearly understood that all creation has its source in God, the only Creator, then material growth and physicality lose their predominance in thought. Expectant parents can care for their child from the very first, cherishing the child's spiritual individuality and origin. They can also glimpse the fact that they and the child share the same divine Parent, and that this relationship frees them from a false sense of responsibility or fear of the unknown. As God's ideas, we reflect His creative power, but we're not personal creators.

Childbirth is painful and unpredictable:

A curse that traces back to the allegory of Adam and Eve shouldn't continue to haunt women. This verse from Isaiah provides comfort and reassurance: "Shall I bring to the birth, and not cause to bring forth? saith the Lord: shall I cause to bring forth, and shut the womb? saith thy God" (66:9). The notion that childbirth is a painful event suggests a separation from divine Love, which knows no pain for its creation. Divine Love rejoices in the constant and harmonious appearing of each idea and would never promote an environment of discomfort.

Childbearing involves two beings, mother and child, who could potentially harm each other:

In the same paragraph on scientific obstetrics, Mrs. Eddy wrote, "Though gathering new energy, this idea cannot injure its useful surroundings in the travail of spiritual birth." Mother and child can witness how divine Life sustains and provides for its ideas. There can be no added strain, no depletion of life. And with the expression of God's creative power comes a natural harmony and order.

The best counsel anyone can hope for rests in the direct relationship to the Creator that all individuals have to nourish and learn from. We are, in St. Paul's memorable words, "all the children of God" (Gal. 3:26).

Adapted from the Christian Science Sentinel.

Labels: Childbirth, Christian Science, Mary Baker Eddy, spirituality

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Friday, May 30, 2008

To promote an upturn in the global economy

A Christian Science perspective on daily life.
from the May 30, 2008 edition

Last month, asahi.com, an online Japanese/English newspaper, posted an editorial titled "Economic pessimism." It began with the old saying, "Worry is often the cause of illness," and added, "The perceived weakening of the economy, too, may have its beginnings in the mind" (April 3). The editorial went on to discuss the importance of reversing feelings of despair and confusion that could have a deleterious impact on the Japanese economy.

It's a keen observation that thought has a direct impact on individual experience and that it can influence collective experience, too. But it's also important to realize that this mental influence doesn't have to be negative. In fact, the individual conviction that divine Principle governs all can have a collective, positive effect on the world economy.

Mary Baker Eddy used strong words when she told readers of her book "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" how to respond to any error of thought: "When the illusion of sickness or sin tempts you, cling steadfastly to God and His idea.... Let neither fear nor doubt overshadow your clear sense and calm trust, that the recognition of life harmonious – as Life eternally is – can destroy any painful sense of, or belief in, that which Life is not" (p. 495).

These statements provide a plan not just for restoring health to the body but also for renovating national economies and international relations – because thought does indeed influence the body and its environment. So when the illusion of a sick economy, or one riddled by greed, forecasts disaster, we can cling more steadfastly to the spiritual fact that everything concerning God's idea – the man and woman of His creating – is as perfect as God is. Also, we can allow only divine Love to speak to us about the health of the economy.

Essential to our confidence is that "recognition of life harmonious." To recognize the true harmony of human affairs is to realize not just that it rests on a spiritual platform, but also that it isn't separate from divine Principle, whose laws define the nature of Life.

News reports such as the one on asahi.com show how international economies are affected not just by actual financial downturns but even just by the thought of a challenge to a major business or weakness in the financial markets. Holding firm with the truth is an important step toward making and keeping them strong. Neither fear nor doubt can hold back divine progress, and our prayers can do much to make it so.

Adapted from an editorial in the Christian Science Sentinel.

Labels: Christian Science, economics, fear, Mary Baker Eddy, pessimism, positive thinking

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Saturday, April 19, 2008

Christian Science is a 'kind and gentle religion'

By REBECCA AUBUT
Standard-Times correspondent
April 19, 2008 6:00 AM

In the late 19th century, after a severe fall that allegedly caused a spinal injury, Mary Baker Eddy turned to the Bible for support and then unexpectedly recovered. Even in childhood, Ms. Eddy was said to have heard the voice of God calling to her. Inspired by her recovery, Ms. Eddy spent the next few years devoted to biblical study and healing; the culmination of which led to the publication of her book "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" and the birth of a new religious way of teaching, Christian Science.

At the core of Christian Science is the teaching that God and God's creation are entirely good and spiritual, and that God's infinite goodness, realized in prayer, heals.

The church's universal system of prayer-based Christian healing created roots by establishing a mother church in Boston, The Church of Christ, in 1879. New Bedford's branch of Christian Science began in 1893 and by 1910 had built and dedicated a church on County Street. By the mid-seventies another Christian Science church was built in the North End of New Bedford.

Here is 274 Union St., New Bedford, the group's main meeting area and the heart and soul of the congregation, their Reading Room. Reading Rooms were established early on for Christian Science members, as well as to be a place for people to come in and learn about Christian Science, says Ms. Booth.

A third generation Christian Science member, Ms. Booth opens the Reading Room's doors three times a week. Along with Marcia Albert, a member of Christian Science since the mid-eighties, she is happy to talk about the history of Christian Science

And though services seem to be dominated by study and reading, as Ms. Booth said, "Mrs. Eddy, with her writings, says that it's not intellectual in the sense that you don't have to be brilliant to embrace Christian Science."

Even with its deep spiritual outlook on life, Christian Science membership has continued to dwindle. Ms. Booth says the church doesn't count the number of its members and that despite a small, older congregation and the closing of many area branches, she still has faith that the church and its beliefs will always have a following.

"I know that the church will flourish, maybe not in this area, but in another community and grow," she said. "I don't have any doubts. It's well established and the writings stand by themselves because it's founded on the Bible; it can't help but go on."

Labels: Bible, Christian Science, healing, Mary Baker Eddy, religion

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Sunday, March 30, 2008

Deep faith may lead to puzzling choices

Posted March 30, 2008

Community of like-minded people reinforces beliefs

By Keith Uhlig
Gannett Wisconsin Media

WAUSAU — Dale and Leilani Neumann of Weston relied on prayer to heal their sick child, 11-year-old Madeline Kara Neumann, police say. After she died from an undiagnosed but treatable form of diabetes, that decision seemed incomprehensible and even criminal to many.

Religious scholars say a potent mix of deep faith and a reinforcing community of like-minded people can lead believers to make choices that seem unfathomable.

Rita Swan, 64, of Sioux City, Iowa, said she and her husband, Douglas, prayed for the recovery of their son, Matthew, along with a Christian Science practitioner, or faith healer.

"We thought Christian Science worked, and we felt superior to the general public. We thought we were closer to God, and we had the kind of secret knowledge in keeping yourself well," Swan said.

After Matthew died of meningitis in 1977, the Swans broke from Christian Science, a religion in which they both grew up. In 1983, they formed Children's Healthcare Is a Legal Duty, an advocacy group that lobbies for laws requiring parents to provide medical help for seriously ill children.

Intense faith is a powerful force, said Rob Howard, an assistant professor of communication and religious studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. It can give the devout the "ability to reinforce certain beliefs that some people can view as extreme."

For many, this kind of faith starts with a powerful feeling they can't explain.

Often people use religion to "understand these experiences, because they're sensed mind and body. It's an intense kind of certainty, an intense kind of conviction, and it might be attached to different beliefs," Howard said.

Leilani Neumann described her strong spiritual feelings in posts on a religious Web site operated by Unleavened Bread Ministries of Pensacola, Fla., led by David Eells. The site doesn't condemn the use of doctors or medicine, but it shares stories of miracle cures and bolsters the notion of faith healing.

The Neumanns told police they weren't members of any specific church, but they found a religious community of sorts through the online ministry that reinforced their faith-healing beliefs.

Labels: Christian Science, community, faith, faith healing, Keith Uhlig, prayer, religion

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Saturday, February 23, 2008

The power of prayer, in good times and bad

Friday, February 22, 2008

Christian Scientists rely on spiritual healing throughout their lives.

By BILL CUNNINGHAM
The Orange County Register

At Fullerton's First Church of Christ, Scientist, two speakers stood together at a wide podium. One read a passage from the Bible; the other read related words from Mary Baker Eddy's book, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures." The Sunday morning congregation listened quietly in the plain sanctuary. No crosses, no statues, no elaborate ornaments. Words and thoughts were emphasized, rather than symbols and rituals.

The two books, the Bible and "Science and Health," are considered to be the spiritual leader of the church. There is no ordained clergy.

Mrs. Eddy, who wrote about suffering with ill health since childhood before studying the Bible and discovering a method of curing herself and others, founded Christian Science in 1879. It was designed "to commemorate the word and works of our Master (Jesus Christ), which should reinstate primitive Christianity and its lost element of healing," states a church manual.

An estimated 1,600 congregations now exist in America, with hundreds more worldwide. Beyond the use of the word "science" in the name, it has nothing to do with Scientology.

Spiritual healing is an important part of the Christian Science religion. When practitioners are sick or injured they pray first, rather than head to a medical doctor.

"Spiritual healing probably has as many different faces as there are individuals that are applying it," said Donald W. Ingwerson, spokesman for Christian Science in Southern California and a church member for over 50 years. "Basically it's the power of prayer that heals. And that prayer is based upon inspiration from the Bible and from 'Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures.' "

But if a church member with a broken bone or a severe illness feels the need for medical treatment, there's no stigma attached. "All Christian Scientists are free to go to a doctor any time they feel the need for it," said Ingwerson. "However, generally speaking, a Christian Scientist would pray first and see where that leads their thought and their need. And if they felt after that prayer, they needed to see a doctor, they should feel free to go see a doctor. But many find that they don't need to go to a doctor after they pray."

Although Mrs. Eddy was founder of the church and the author of one of its most important texts, she is not looked upon a saint or a prophet. "But she certainly has the deep respect of the world for the religion she created," said Ingwerson. "Mrs. Eddy herself said 'look for me in my works' and that's where she wants to be of value to us."

Each church reaches out to the community in several ways. There are practitioners, considered full-time professional healers, who can be called by anyone seeking treatment through prayer. And there are Reading Rooms open to the public throughout the county. These rooms have Bibles and Christian Science literature available for reading, borrowing or purchasing.

On Wednesday evenings, one-hour Testimony Meetings are held, at which individuals tell of personal experiences involving healing. At a recent meeting, several spoke of ailments that were resolved without medical assistance. One woman told of many healings, "physical, emotional and relational" over the years.

Unlike some individuals who live in fear or hope of an afterlife, Christian Scientists "don't believe in a literal sense of heaven and hell," said Ingwerson. "We don't think it's a place. We think it's a state of thought and it's right here. You're living in your own hell or heaven right now. It's not a place you go to later."

Labels: Bill Cunningham, Christian Science, Christianity, health, Jesus, Mary Baker Eddy, prayer, spiritual healing

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Friday, August 10, 2007

The Dilemma of Spiritual Healing

If only my mother would remember that she's God's perfect child--and so is her doctor--maybe she wouldn't feel so guilty.

By Susan Sherman

I lay in the dark with a headache, praying to know that it wasn't real. My mother told me I was God's perfect child, made in His likeness. I was His reflection, she said, like an image in a mirror. I couldn't have a headache because God couldn't have a headache. I fell asleep, and the headache lifted. I was three.

Spiritual healing has long been part of my family on my mother's side. It was normal for my mother and grandmother, who had continued the family drift away from Judaism, to talk about illness as error, an illusion, to "un-see" anything negative because God could never have made it. My mother followed my grandmother into Christian Science, the religion founded in 1879 by Mary Baker Eddy, a New England woman who was healed of a serious injury by studying the way Jesus healed--seeing the allness of God and the nothingness of evil.

Although the church does not directly prohibit anyone from getting medical help, in reality there's a good deal of social pressure not to seek it. If you're under a doctor's care, you can't visit a Christian Science practitioner or hold church office, and you feel guilty even sitting in church or doing the weekly lesson readings. You're not radically relying on God, and it's your own fault that you're not being healed. As Mrs. Eddy writes, "If patients fail to experience the healing power of Christian Science, and think they can be benefited by certain ordinary physical methods of medical treatment, then the Mind-physician should give up such cases, and leave invalids free to resort to whatever other systems they fancy will afford relief." (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures page 443). Emphasis on "think" and "fancy."

For years, we had many healings in my family. And sometimes we didn't.
My grandmother died of breast cancer in 1968. Years later, at age 67, my mother developed lymphoma. When the tumor grew noticeable, she went to a doctor, who told her unequivocally, "This is fatal if not treated." Fearing to go through what my grandmother did, she was treated medically. She didn't die. But her guilt at becoming ill in the first place (through the sin of false belief), and then resorting to materia medica for healing, brought on a serious depression and panic disorder. It was an agitated kind of depression that raged for five years, wreaking as much havoc in her life and ours as the cancer. The depression abated for 12 years, then returned full force following another treatable bout of cancer this year.

My mom has tried desperately to get her faith back. At times she will renounce medicine, then obsessively worry about minor symptoms and go to the doctor. She will take half-doses of antidepressants and then read her Bible. She will call her Christian Science practitioner many times a day, but the words offered by this saintly woman don't sink in. Swinging back and forth between medicine and spiritual healing, never feeling confident in either, she has become undone by guilt. Constantly denying and "un-seeing" material conditions are too great a strain on her mind.

This story doesn't have a happy ending (yet). But for me, it does have a big lesson. I've learned that having to choose "either/or" cuts us off from the manifold blessings of God. I believe now that God created us, body and soul; that God created many kinds of healers--physicians, nurses, medical researchers, massage therapists, medical intuitives, acupuncturists, and psychotherapists, as well as purely spiritual healers. Why is it OK to accept all the scientific advances of the 21st century, except in the field of medicine? Because Jesus was evolved enough to heal without drugs? Jesus also said that the lilies of the field don't toil or spin. Yet we still work and wear clothing.

I believe in spiritual healing, and sometimes I can get to a deep place within, that place that I first located as a child when I had a headache. I get there by closing my eyes and picturing myself diving down, down into a vast ocean beneath the pain, and just resting there in God's arms. I call it "my place of healing." But if I can't get there, I don't feel guilty about reaching for an aspirin.

Labels: Christian Science, health, illness, Susan Sherman