It sounds like a good placement of two words.
Christian Science.
I mean, if I had heard this, without knowing a thing about it, I might have signed up. The true meaning of “Christian” is to be Christ-like. And let’s face it. He was a pretty good dude. And then you take the word “Science.” A beautiful thing. Science is the study of our physical and natural world through close observation. Science uses experimentation. It tests theories. It obtains evidence and proof about our world. Incredible.
So. Christian Science seems like it should equal “Good Dude Discoveries.”
But, as we know, Christian Science is a different thing.
It is a religion founded by Mary Baker Eddy in 1879. Members hold the belief that only God and the mind have ultimate reality and that sin and illness are illusions that can be overcome by prayer and faith.
A little bit about Mary Baker Eddy. She was born on today’s date, July 16, 1821. Hence the reason I mention her. Baker Eddy came from a place called Bow, New Hampshire. I’m not sure if it is bow — like a bow and arrow. Or bow — like a dog goes, bow wow wow.
Anyway, her parents were devout Congregationalists. And at that time, it seemed that Puritan piety was alive and well and a force in the religious world of New England.
Okay. So she had some tough times, one thing right after the other. She struggled with serious illness during childhood. Her favorite brother died when she was 20. Then, she became a widow at 22 after only a half year of marriage. She was engaged to marry again, but in 1849, she lost both her mother and her fiancé within three weeks of each other.
It keeps going. She married another man in 1853. A guy named Daniel Patterson. He deserted her, and the marriage ended in divorce. Patterson and her father conspired to separate her from her only child, a 12-year-old son from her first marriage. She would not see her son again for nearly 25 years.
But her religious upbringing stayed strong. The study of the Bible was her go-to thing. Steadfast.
But Mary Baker Eddy’s spiritual path took an unusual direction during the 1850s. There was a brand new medical trend called homeopathy. I imagine she had lost all faith in traditional medicine due to her life circumstances. According to her biography, “she hit on what some today would call the placebo effect.” She was convinced that the cause of disease was rooted in the human mind. She concluded that illness was not God’s will but, rather, all in one’s head.
Sidebar. My favorite line from the movie Chicken Run is: “It’s all in me head. It’s all in me head.”
Anyway.
Not long after her revelation, Baker Eddy was injured in a severe fall. She turned to an account in the Bible concerning healing. At that moment, she experienced a great spiritual illumination and discovery. It brought on her immediate recovery. It also gave her a new direction in life, one on which she based Christian Science.
She spent the next nine years doing scriptural studies, healing work, and teaching. It all culminated in 1875 when she published her major work, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures. And with this, the religion was born.
Christian Science states that physical illness and sin are states of mind. They are completely correctable through properly applied prayer. Believers routinely refuse medical care. Although recently, there have been relaxed guidelines that allow the followers to choose between prayer and conventional medical treatment. But first, any Christian Scientist who is ill must turn to the church’s practitioners. Their treatment? A good dose of prayer from the practitioners who are oftentimes a great distance away.
And there it is.
Mary Baker Eddy caught pneumonia. She died on December 3, 1910. She was 89.
So once again, we see the diversity of the world, especially where religions are concerned. Some of it might be good, and some might be bad.
And with that? Oh, let us pray.
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“The function of prayer is not to influence God, but rather to change the nature of the one who prays.”
― Soren Kierkegaard
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“Goodness is about what you do. Not who you pray to.”
― Terry Pratchett, Snuff
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“Forgive me my nonsense as I also forgive the nonsense of those who think they talk sense.”
― Robert Frost
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Science. Christian. And so the two shall meet.
