Church #49. Christian Science Church.

O boy, where do I start with this one....? I am gonna put this out there right now. This was not a great experience at all. Have you even sat in a room the entire time with your eyebrow raised, and thinking that everything you are being told is questionable or totally out to left field? That was this kind of church for me.

It is an older building, my guess is that it was built in the 70's and not much has been changed since. The main body of the church was laid with almost all yellow stain glass windows, giving the room a strange "supper yellow" glow, like one would see in old photos.Also, no cross at the front of the room. There was roughly 12 people at this service. Of all different background and age groups.

I didn't research a lot into this church, but from what I can gather it was started in Massachusetts and was in some way founded by a lady called Mary Baker Eddy. They also did a very persistent job of reminding every one that they have a "Public Reading Room" and its hours of operation.

Right from the get go, I knew this place was different. Lords prayer was barely recognizable. Totally different. God was referred to as "our Father Mother God". Which I thought was kind of nice, but I still prefer the method of referring to God as the earth or the sky etc. It kind of puts the image of God into a larger global perspective without the argument of gender bias. That is my thoughts though.

And then the real eyebrow action started. So if I had to put this all into a nutshell, I would describe this church as having the idea that; because man is made in God's image, therefor man is perfect and and we are put on earth to rule over and control anything and everything.

Don't worry it gets better.....

Apparently we should also not believe human theories on health,  and there is no such thing as accidents and it is all under Gods direction.

"Man is not matter, man is spiritual." 

"Man is spiritual and perfect!" 

WTF?

I am not sure where these people were for Christianity 101, but even babes of wolfs know that we are not perfect, by far. I, or anyone else I know, certainly doesn't fit that description. That status belongs only to the big guy upstairs, and also his son ( mattering on your perception.) 

Not only that, I feel that this way of thinking is not only questionable but dangerous. I could see this kind of philosophy easily being adapted to further such things as environmental destruction, imperialism and foreign invasion.

Strangely one of the first things that came to my mind was Mao's War against Nature in China.
This was was fed on the idea that "Man must conquer nature!" and put all of its forces under the control of the hands of man. And as you can guess that ended up going very, very, very bad.

As a wise Rabi once told me, God exists in many different forms in our world, and nature is "the green face of God." An Image to be loved, respected, and glorified.

Honestly the only thing I really enjoyed out of this service was the fact that we got to sing Beethoven's 9th symphony "Ode to Joy!" at the end.

And to end this I leave you with the words of the man himself;