From a Forum post on TMC Youth:
I didn't know anything about CS & had heard that it was a cult, etc. I was reading a book by a New Age author who was raised CS & the things she described resonated with what I believe. So, I decided to look into it further. It has been 1 year & I feel frustrated at how hard it is to learn. S&H is difficult to read and church doesn't help me understand anything more nor does the bible lesson. Yet, with all of this difficulty, I continue to try b/c of what people talk about CS being for them. Plus, it's one of the few Christian religions where the people seem genuinely happy - that says a lot!
1. What I would like is to be able to go to Sunday School and learn the basics there. It seems like everything that I want to learn people say they learned in SS. But, I'm waaaaay over the age limit.
2. It would be nice to have some kind of introductory/study guide to help. For example, I am lost when it comes to Prayer and how to pray and what to say, etc. I know there isn't a set formula, but there are steps people go through. Maybe first looking in the bible for a great quote or something... How long do you pray? If nothing is happening, do you find another quote? What do you say? And the list goes on...
3. A lot of people seem to have been raised as CS & don't realize how difficult it is to understand much less utilize the information in S&H. I'm sure many people found healing just reading it, but for me, I haven't found healing nor understanding. And there isn't a resource available to aid me. I've read The Sentinel, MBE Biographies, etc.
So, there are my difficulties at 1 year in. Take it for what it's worth - 1 person's opinion."
http://www.tmcyouth.com/forums/showthread.php?p=18126#post18126
Posts
I think CS has much promise and power, but I think the church services are ghastly. I attend a non-denominational church on Sundays and the local church on Wednesday evenings. That's the most support I can offer the church right now. I wish I could do better, but I find our church service to be horribly boring. Horribly.
ReplyDeleteWould love to hear more about your responses to that survey.
in response to the statement, "I wish i could go to Sunday School", when i was a new student of Christian Science, 24, I would visit a local CS practitioner after the Wednesday evening service every week for maybe a year. Being a new single mom (in the 60's), in my parents' home where Christian Science was not understood or appreciated, i could have been completely alienated, but this practitioner saw my need and reached out to me. i hope someone will do that for you.
ReplyDeleteLet me add that i had been a traditional Christian all my life and always loved Jesus' teachings, but it was the Science that made sense to me...God being the perfect Principle that held everything in order, right where all this flux appeared to material vision. There should be a law to turn to to meet every human need--and apparently there is. Every story should have the potential to have a happy ending... What prepared the way for me was that when i was in high school my dad had slammed his hand on the table and said, "You see this table? You think it's solid but it's not...it's moving molecules (i was studying chemistry at that time i'm sure). I went around looking at everything with new eyes. Six years later when i began studying Christian Science and i was told that matter was not what it appeared to be, it was actually a concept of individual and collective thought, i really didn't have far to go. In this computer age, i like to explain what the 5 physical senses tell us as 'a hard copy of thought!'
We are always building on what we do understand. My kids always liked the expression of the glass of muddy water...as you pour in clean water eventually the glass of water is totally clean. As we understand/enjoy/practice the spiritual facts we learn in Christian Science right where the opposite appears to our material senses, matter does change. if matter were substantial on its own, that could never happen.
there is something else, Science and Health was given to me as a teenager by the lady who hired me to care for her children while she and her husband went to church on Wednesday nights...and that's a whole great story in itself...i took this book with me along with my Bible when i moved across country years later. when i opened S/H to read it, i really didn't understand it. One day my world fell apart, after speaking with my minister and feeling he didn't have any better answers than i did, i opened the Christian Science textbook and strangely, i understood it perfectly. isn't that strange? there was no turning back. regardless of how well i might practice Christian Science or not throughout my life, i could never again believe that Spirit could create the opposite of itself, matter. when i teach Sunday school i teach the little kids their opposites [up/down, fast/slow]so that eventually it will make sense to them that you cannot have two opposites in the same place at the same time. if one is true, the other must be ----- untrue! logic! keeping that in view, holding to what is true, sooner or later what is not true dissipates/yields/changes...just as fog dissipates under given conditions. the world believes that Spirit and matter mix; Christian Science teaches that they are opposites. i'll go with the latter...to me, that's logic!