Update to an earlier post

Just over a year ago I wrote this post, regarding Linda Osmundson, a prominent resident of the St. Petersburg, Florida area, who was the founder of a local organization dedicated to helping victims of domestic violence. She was also a Christian Scientist, and was forced to resign her position with the organization she founded due to a very obvious health concern in the form of a growth on her face. Sadly, I have recently learned that she has succumbed to whatever her illness was (she apparently did have a diagnosis, but never shared it publicly).

The Impersonal Christian Scientist

As I was writing and editing my recent post Love, I began to see issues I touched on there that I wanted to expand on, but it just didn’t seem to work within that post. The biggest one for me is something that has become very apparent to me as I’ve left Christian Science: the coldness and impersonal nature of many Christian Scientists–especially parents.

Somewhere Over The Rainbow

“Somewhere over the rainbow way up high
There’s a land that I heard of once in a lullaby
Somewhere over the rainbow skies are blue
And the dreams that you dare to dream really do come true.”
~From the movie “The Wizard of Oz” (music by Harold Arlen, lyrics by E. Y. Harburg)

Praying for a healing in Christian Science is sort of like chasing a rainbow. You feel like you can almost touch it, get close to it, but it remains ever elusive.

Just Because You Can, Should You?

Morality can be a shifting line, and there are definitely some gray areas. For some, living in a sexual relationship outside of marriage is absolutely immoral, for many others, it’s not. It’s not illegal to have sex outside of marriage, or for couples in relationships to live together outside of marriage, but just because it’s not illegal, is it right to do this? Many will argue that it’s not ok. I don’t care either way. But, I have a different issue in mind here outside of sexual morality (a very weird subject in connection to Christian Science, by the way). My issue relates to the raising and protecting of children.

Ignoring the gorilla in the room

Recently, this news story came across my Facebook newsfeed courtesy of one of the ex-Christian Scientist groups I’m in. I ask that you give it a read before continuing with this post. Go ahead…I’ll wait.

There–finished the article? Great! What did you think? Please feel free to share your thoughts in the comments, via e-mail–or if you’re up to it, go ahead and write a guest post. I’ll take a few moments now to share some of my thoughts, since this is my blog, after all.

Growing Up Christian Scientist: My Experience

I’m embarking on a series of posts that will look into what it’s like to grow up as a Christian Scientist. Look for future posts under the category “Growing Up Christian Scientist“.

I love it when inspiration and/or topics for blog posts are dropped into my lap, or in this case, my e-mail inbox. A reader recently e-mailed me with some nice compliments on a couple of posts, told me some of their story, and finished off by asking for my insights into growing up as a Christian Scientist, and some of the “sheltering” that our Christian Scientist parents did to us to keep us as protected as they could from the “big bad material world”. Since this is an insight that may be of interest to others, I will begin to answer my reader’s question here in this post.

Christian Science Q & A

The following is a Question & Answer post where former Christian Scientists try and explain Christian Science reasoning to fairly commonly asked questions. We will be periodically sharing them, as questions that would benefit from multiple perspectives arise. This post is being answered by EG, who blogs at emergegently.wordpress.com, and Kat, who blogs at Kindism.org. It will be simultaneously cross-posted on both blogs. We have catagorized and tagged these as “Christian Science Q&A”

Today, we answer this question, posed by a reader at Kindism: If a Christian Scientist is gravely ill and prays for healing and dies when a medical intervention could have saved their life is that, in the minds of their loved ones, simply because God didn’t want them to live?

Uncomfortable Truths (a follow-up to “Where’s Mary?”)

My post “Where’s Mary?” from earlier this week has generated some interest from a fellow ex-Christian Scientist blogger (who re-blogged it on her blog) and some of her/his followers, although I don’t think the Christian Science apologist really read my post. In this post, I ask the rhetorical questions, “What are Christian Scientists afraid of?” and “Why are Christian Scientists in stealth mode?”. While I do sort of answer them in the post, here’s an in-your-face answer to that: a video by Liz Heywood, a survivor of religious-based child neglect. I’ve talked about her case many times in the past, how her Christian Scientist parents chose prayer over conventional medical treatment to treat a bone infection that left her permanently crippled, eventually necessitating amputation of the affected leg. Had her parents sought treatment, she could have been successfully treated with antibiotics, and the whole thing would have been an anecdotal memory of childhood.

Professional Accountability

This is another in my series on contradictions in Christian Science practice, teachings, and culture. See others under the category of Contradictions.

I visit a physical therapist on occasion, when some part of me is injured or sore. My physio has worked wonders on my chronic lower back issues, and helped me with a shoulder injury I sustained this past winter. My physio is also a certified acupuncturist, and acupuncture helped greatly in alleviating the pain of the shoulder injury. I also visit a walk-in clinic when I need medical attention (I still haven’t gotten around to connecting with a regular General Practitioner). Back in the day, when I had hair, I also visited a barber. I take my cat to a veterinarian for regular check-ups and vaccinations. I work with colleagues who are certified social workers–something I am considering becoming.

Monkeys With Machine Guns

In a conversation I had with a business acquaintance a few years ago, we were discussing a multi-level marketing company we had both at different times had a brush with, which sells various financial and investment instruments through a network of independent distributors, most of whom have no prior experience or education in the finance or investment fields. He had gone much farther with the company than I did and became a representative and manger for awhile before realizing how flawed the company’s business model was and leaving. I attended one informational meeting at the behest of another friend of mine who was a distributor. When I rather quickly realized the business was a multi-level marketing scheme, I beat a hasty retreat. My acquaintance likened the company’s business model to “giving machine guns to monkeys”. This was his very astute way of describing the handing over of a complex task to someone completely unqualified for it. You’d think that no reasonably sane person would do that, but many do–sometimes with disastrous results for their financial portfolios. Personally, I’ll stick with a financial advisor who has the requisite business or economics degree, and relevant experience.