Polemics, Christian Science

All right, this morning, I actually want to start out by reading a heretic. I mean, Mark Twain. Everybody's familiar with Mark Twain, possibly, hopefully. Also known as Samuel Clemens. For a while, he lived in Virginia City, Nevada, and Carson City, Nevada, where I grew up some of my life. So, he's got a little historical connection there for me.

Mark Twain's wife and his daughter both died of very painful diseases. And this morning we're going to be discussing Christian science, or also known as Church of Christ, scientists. He really didn't like the Christian scientists, so he wrote a book about it. None of the publishers would actually publish his book, because it was a bit too controversial.

But I'm going to read to you the very short first chapter of it. It's a page and a half, and some of it's dialogue, so it's not even a full page and a half. But it should either cause you to chuckle, but will also introduce you to one of the problems of Christian science right off.

It says, Vienna, 1899. This last summer, when I was on my way back to Vienna from the appetite cure in the mountains, I fell over a cliff in the twilight and broke some arms and legs in one thing or another, and by good luck was found by some peasants who had lost an ass, and they carried me to the nearest habitation, which was one of those large, low thatched-roofed farmhouses with apartments in the garret for the family and a cunning little porch under the deep gable decorated with boxes of bright colored flowers and cats. On the ground floor, a large and light sitting room separated from the milch cattle apartment by a partition. And in the front yard rose stately and fine and the wealth and pride of the house, the manure pile. That sentence is Germanic and shows that I am acquiring that sort of mastery of the art and spirit of the language, which enables a man to travel all day in one sentence without changing cars." Okay, so that's a bit of a long first paragraph, but we'll get into it here in just a second.

He got, he fell off a cliff. There was a village a mile away and a horse doctor lived there, but there was no surgeon. It seemed a bad outlook. Mine was distinctly a surgery case. When it was remembered that a lady from Boston was summering in that village and she was a Christian science doctor and could cure anything. So she was sent for. It was night by this time, and she could not conveniently come, but sent word that it was no matter, there was no hurry, she would give me absent treatment, now, and come in the morning. Meantime, she begged me to make myself tranquil and comfortable, and remember that there was nothing the matter with me. I thought there must be some mistake. And now the dialogue starts. Did you tell her I walked off a cliff seventy-five feet high? Yes. And struck a boulder at the bottom and bounced? Yes. and struck another one and bounced again? Yes. And struck another one and bounced yet again? Yes. And broke the boulders? Yes. That accounts for it. She's thinking of the boulders.

Why didn't you tell her I got hurt too? I did. I told her what you told me to tell her. That you are now but an incoherent series of compound fractures extending from scalp block to your heels. and that the comminuted projections caused you to look like a hat rack. And it was after this that she wished me to remember that there was nothing the matter with me. Those were her words.

I do not understand it. I believe she has not diagnosed the case with sufficient care. Did she look like a person who was theorizing or did she look like one who has fallen off precipices herself and brings to the aid of abstract science the confirmations of personal experience? Pardon. It was too large a contract for the young person's vocabulary. I'm translating the German for you there.

She couldn't call the hand. I allowed the subject to rest there and asked for something to eat and smoke, and something hot to drink, and a basket to pile my legs in. But I could not have any of these things. Why? She said you would need nothing at all. But I am hungry and thirsty and in desperate pain. She said you would have those delusions, but must pay no attention to them. She wants you to particularly remember that there are no such things as hunger and thirst and pain.

She does, does she? That's what she said. Does she seem to be in full and functional possession of her intellectual plant, such as it is? Pardon? Do they let her run at large, or do they tie her up? Tie her up? There, good night, run along, you're a good girl, but your mental gesture is not arranged for light and airy conversation. Leave me to my delusions.

Okay, so that's the first chapter. I find it highly humorous. It's Mark Twain's lighthearted way of poking fun of one of the biggest problems that most people from the outside would have with Christian science. Yes, Tom? There we go, that's good. There was a Mad Magazine card where it said, I'm a Christian scientist in case of an emergency, it's just your imagination. And that's what it really comes down to for most people on the outside as they run into Christian scientists.

I had a teacher that was not over me, but in the elementary school I went to as a kid, who'd gotten into an accident with a horse and it had broken her leg. Her leg was not doing the normal up and down bend at the knee joint thing. It was funky and she was hobbling. But her husband was a Christian scientist, doctor, or practitioner, and you don't do anything about it. It's just in your head. So she hobbled, and as far as I know, still hobbles. I actually had the chance to see her in passing, going back to Carson City to visit my family, and there she was still walking, kind of funny, and her leg wasn't straight, a little less painful looking, but it had just healed funky, but it was all in her head.

So most people, when they get exposed to Christian science, don't get introduced to their doctrine beyond this idea that pain and suffering don't really exist, it's all in your head. Well, this morning we're going to take a look at some of the other doctrines that they hold to. Let me turn off the speaker over here. There we go. It's almost like quiet, except for I'll be talking. I'm going to do a very quick rundown of some of the, this is 20 ideas that the Church of Christ scientist believes, okay? And some of these we can agree with, okay? Carefully, but our definitions are different, so we wouldn't agree with their definitions, but I'll read it and you can tell me what you think if you have anything to interject.

God is infinite and there is no other power or source. God is universal principle. I don't quite know what universal principle means, except for that we'll get into it, but it's just a little funny way to say things. God cannot indwell a person. Okay? So God cannot indwell a person.

Remember that for those of you who think that the Holy Spirit is inside of you. God is the only intelligence in the universe, including man. So God is within man if man has intelligence. But God can't be inside of you, therefore you must not be intelligent. but I'm drawing conclusions based on what they're saying, forgive me. God is mind.

God is the Father-Mother. If I hadn't have gone and looked up these references myself, I would have thought somebody was maybe saying goofy things, but it actually says God is the Father-Mother. The Trinity is... Okay, this is the Trinity. Don't think Father, Son, Holy Spirit. Life, truth, and love. That's the Trinity. Belief in the traditional doctrine of the Trinity is polytheism.

Christ is a spiritual idea of Sonship, but he's not the Son of God. He's the spiritual idea of Sonship. Jesus was not the Christ. Jesus Christ is not God as Jesus himself declared. You'd have a hard time showing me where he didn't declare that, but okay. Jesus did not reflect the fullness of God.

The Holy Spirit is divine science. There is no devil, there is no sin. Evil and good are not real. Matter, sin, and sickness are not real, but only illusions. Life is not material or organic. The sacrifice of Jesus was not sufficient to cleanse from sin. And true healings are the result of true belief. So that last one there is the one that you... Yes, they're basically, because you believe, Correctly, you recognize correctly that you are healed because you were never sick, if that makes any sense.

We're told by Paul in Romans 6 that we were crucified with Christ. Well, we don't see the scars on ourselves from the crucifixion. Do you believe it or not? Do you believe you're identified with Christ or not? Well, we say yes, because what took place was by representation with Christ. We were not literally on the cross with him, but our sins were on the cross with him. We were with him, identified with him on the cross. Well, they have the same mindset with this. We just need to believe that this is how it is, and that's how it is.

Only, they don't have scripture to reference. They have this book, which we'll talk about in just a moment, called Science and Health. Well, they've redefined all the terms. They're not using a medical term. It's not medical. It's purely metaphysical. You know, it's this whole idea of the spiritual is really all that is.

So we'll get into that in just a second. I know it's confusing. You're trying to think about it. You can't do that because if you think about it, then you can't be a good Christian scientist. I hate to say it that way, but it's basically what it comes down to.

Christian Science was started by a gal by the name of Mary Baker Eddy. She was born July 16th, 1821 and died December 3rd, 1910. She was chronically ill as a child and later studied theology, and that's when she formed the ideas of Christian Science.

Even further than that, she met with a guy by the name of Phineas Quimby, which is like a dead giveaway for some kind of... Sham, I mean, the guy is totally a huckster with a name like Phineas Quimby. No, but I mean, it sounds perfect from a cartoon or something. But he taught the idea that people could heal people with their thought. In 1875, she published a thousand copies of this book, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures.

And finally, in 1877, she married a guy whose name was Esau Eddy, and that's where we get the Baker-Eddy hyphenation name there. and he died five years later. She did not remarry after that. Okay, so that is a brief biography of Mary Baker Eddy, giving you all the high points and the low points.

But she dealt with illness as a young child and got exposed to medical understanding of the time, so in the 1800s. not the modern stuff we have and it wasn't always effective clearly. I mean I think we can identify that in our own experiences, that even still now we're working out some medicine.

Well, since the medicine didn't work for her, she had to come up with another plan. How many of you have ever been in a medical situation where the first version of what you get taught, or get told by the doctor it didn't work. So they have to try a plan B. I know I have. Unfortunately, the lobotomy didn't work. I'm still here. No, but so because she had this bad experience with medicine or doctors and science of the natural form, she decided to pursue a secondary source of solution.

Let's take a quick guess. What kind of Bible interpretation do you think she uses? Do you think she's literal or allegorical? Allegorical. You'll notice that pretty much everybody that we run across has problems, usually somehow tied into allegorical interpretation.

She, in her book, Science and Health, which I will just call Science and Health instead of Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, because that's a lot to say over and over again. She has a list of the different theological ideas that she holds to, and they're outside of that one that I have there that somebody else compiled. And I wanted to take a look at that list versus what the Bible says. And beyond that, we're gonna take a look at specifically some quotes from their doctrinal sources, dealing with some important topics that Christianity holds different views to in greater detail. The first one I have here is under the left-hand column is adherence of truth.

We take the inspired word of the Bible as our sufficient guide to eternal life. Okay, so they recognize the Bible as inspired. Do we recognize the Bible as inspired? Yes, we do. So we can agree on that, except for, and this is something there, is the Bible our sufficient guide to eternal life? Is it for eternal life, or is it for earthly life? Christ is our life. The word is given to us now. for the earthly, it will still be true because it's from God in the heavenlies, but it's not our guide to eternal life. When we get to heaven, what does Ephesians... is it Ephesians 2? Uh-oh, I should have written my quote down. In Ephesians 2 where it says God will perpetually be revealing his love and kindness to us in the heavenlies when we're with him.

How does that fit in with the limitation of the scripture? God's going to reveal his infiniteness to us, so it's not going to be just limited to the Bible at that point in time. So, it's nitpicky, I'll give you that, but I think it's important to recognize that it's a funny thing.

The other thing to ask is, did Adam and Eve know all of what the Bible had revealed in it? They really didn't have a Bible, did they? God prophesies in Genesis chapter 3 that a descendant of Eve will crush the serpent's head and the serpent will bite his heel. They have some prophecy of a Messiah coming there, but they didn't really understand it. Eve named one of her sons the One, and it turned out that he wasn't the one that they thought that it was going to be. So their knowledge was pretty limited. They didn't understand the Messiah. They didn't understand what was going on there.

So to say As adherents of truth, okay, were Adam and Eve adherents of truth? After they fell, they realized, hey, they had not embraced truth. Was Moses an adherent of truth? Was Abraham an adherer of truth? And did he understand this? Because revelation is progressive, because God revealed his truth over time, to make this statement is very problematic, because suddenly you have our knowledge now gives us what is truth so that we can live what would be considered a good Christian science life. What does Abraham do? He wasn't living a good Christian science life. Is he going to hell? What's he doing? How about David? What do you do with that?

I couldn't find anything that dealt with that. They just deal with the Bible secondarily. They didn't have a really good theological resource that I was able to locate that could answer that. Maybe they have somebody who teaches that could answer that for me, but I could never find an answer from any of the information they had available.

We see that all scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be adequate equipped for every good work, which is again, an earthly perspective. This is their guide for eternal life, and that's not the way that Scripture portrays itself.

Let's take a look at any questions on that one before I jump down to the next. I don't want to skip ahead if I've said something goofy. The next one down is, We acknowledge and adore one supreme and infinite God. We acknowledge His Son, one Christ, the Holy Ghost or Divine Comforter, and man in God's image and likeness.

That's kind of a strangely worded description of what we would call the Trinity. But they don't believe in the Trinity, so they believe that these three entities exist. But they don't believe that these three entities exist in one being the Trinity. Another quote from them, which I plucked out and put in here just because I thought it was important to note. The theory of three persons in one God that is a personal trinity or triunity suggests polytheism rather than the one ever present I am.

Here, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord. Okay. So, yes, Tom. One Lord doesn't come out. Yeah, well, I don't think Mary Baker Eddy was a Hebrew scholar. For those of you listening on the tape, one Lord doesn't come out as one Lord in the original Hebrew.

There's some more context that's part of the language. We could take a look at various references on the Trinity. That's like a whole class by itself, but I've got some here. Matthew 3, 16 and 17 shows, God the Father speaking, the Holy Spirit descending as a dove, and Christ physically there. I think that's a good representation of the Trinity. They're all happening at once, together, in one place, and yet they're all God. There's three of them, three distinct beings, but they were all united as one.

Genesis 126, Genesis 1.26 states that mankind was made in our image, not my image singular, but our image in a plural context. Christ's references saying that I am clearly states his godhood. It's funny, she uses I am from the Old Testament quote to prove that God is one, and yet doesn't recognize Christ's usage of I Am to prove that he is one with God because they are one. This next one is a humdinger. It's the next page here, and so is page two.

We acknowledge God's forgiveness of sin in the destruction of sin and the spiritual understanding that casts out evil as unreal. But the belief in sin is punished so long as the belief lasts. Okay, let me, let's take a look at that because there's a couple ideas in there. God forgives sin in the destruction of sin and the spiritual understanding that casts out evil as unreal. So by revealing to you through Christian science that sin is not real, God has forgiven it. So as long as you believe what Christian science teaches and that it is real, then you believe that sin does not exist, evil does not exist, and it's not real. And that is how they define forgiveness.

You're forgiven because you understand that you didn't actually sin, which would, of course, mean that you need forgiveness because you sinned, but that's a circular argument, we won't go there. But the belief in sin is punished so long as the belief lasts, and that's why there can be a hell, and we'll get into that in a later section. So as long as you believe that there is sin, then you'll be punished for it.

Now, I didn't look into this, but one thing that came to mind is, if you were in hell, could you change your mind? At what point in time do you... I don't know, because this is all on a spiritual level. She's not worried about earthly time and space continuum stuff, so I'm just curious how she deals with that.

Romans 3.23 states that all have sinned.

I think that was the first Bible verse I remember memorizing, for all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. Unfortunately, no one ever reminded me to go past that when I was memorizing verses, so I just stayed under the law as much as I could for a while. Romans 6 speaks of sin in a literal and exacting way. We died to the law and we died to sin. Does sin exist or not? Yes, it exists. That's why Christ died, for the sin, because it exists.

It's not just a mind game. When I was studying this, I sent messages to my dad throughout the week. I just kept sending him things like, I can't believe they believe this. These people have got to be doing drugs or something. To me, this is all an intellectual exercise that ignores any spiritual reference and replaces it with what Mary Baker teaches. Just out the window. It doesn't matter what the Bible says. because they interpret it allegorically, she can take what it does say and say it means something else, or they can just ignore it and say that that's not for us.

So, when we look at the sense stuff, I'm just like, hello, wake up. But wait, it gets better, because we're going to go down to the next section where we're going to talk about Jesus' atonement. We acknowledge Jesus' Atonement as the evidence of divine, efficacious love, unfolding man's unity with God through Christ Jesus, the Way-Shower. And we acknowledge that man is saved through Christ, through truth, life, and love, as demonstrated by the Galilean prophet, in healing the sick and overcoming sin and death. I'm sorry, what? No, it's Way-Shower. Yeah. Oh, no, no, way shower.

And I'm sorry, what did you say, Marilyn? Oh, they're saved from the idea that there's sin, which isn't real anyways. Well, you're not saved until you realize that it's not real. I know you're thinking again. Stop that. I'm not kidding. I took this from their source. I didn't take it out of context. This is all one long string of paragraphs, and I've just broken them up into sections to deal with together, so I'm not even taking things out of context. This all flows together. 1 Corinthians 15, 3 through 4, and I'm sure you guys are familiar with that reference. We've used it again and again as we've gone through this series.

Man is saved through belief in Christ, that he died for our sins, that he was buried and resurrected. And that is the gospel message, not that he was a way-shower who showed us how to heal the sick and overcome sickness and death by believing the right things intellectually. In that case, though, when you die, you would be a total failure.

Which? Yeah, I haven't actually looked up how they address that because I know they have to have addressed that somewhere and I just ran out of time and there was so much, I just kept going, really, they believe this? And so I should have probably looked that up, I apologize. I'm sure they address it somehow, because obviously that would seem like a pretty big fraud situation, but they make a pretty mean newspaper.

So we have crucifixion, obviously, as a part of what it is, that is part of what Christ did. They believe in this, that he did get crucified, but because he's not directly the Son of God, I don't know that he could atone for our sins the right way. But we'll talk about that in a little bit. We acknowledge that the crucifixion of Jesus and his resurrection served to uplift faith, to understand eternal life, even the allness of soul, spirit, and the nothingness of matter. Okay, so that's why when you feel like you're sick, or your leg's broken, or my car got hit, but it's really not hit because it's just all in my head. because matter is nothing. It doesn't matter, and it's not important.

So she's worked physics in here. The crucifixion of Christ paid for the consequence of sin, and those who believe have been justified, glorified, and sanctified, as well as the aforementioned identification and positional truths. So they deal with with Christ's crucifixion and resurrection as something that should encourage us towards truth in the Christian science way, whereas when we say we are identified with Christ and our position is in Him because of His crucifixion and resurrection. So for us, it's critical for our salvation and it's important for us to even grasp how salvation comes about. For them, it's just inspiring. Oh boy, I mean, That belittles the cross, if you ask me, if it's just inspiring. The next and last point in this grid here, and we solemnly promise to watch and pray for that mind to be in us, which was also in Christ Jesus, to do unto others as we would have them do unto us, and to be merciful, just, and pure. Now, let me ask you an important philosophical question. How do you have righteousness, and describe righteousness, and then describe sin, and then say sin doesn't exist? How do you say, ah, you shouldn't do wrong, but you should do right, but then say that wrong doesn't exist?

You can't do it. That's, you know, Marilyn, you kept asking basically that question. Hey, how do you, wait a minute, how does this, you know, you can't think about it on a, you have to accept at the very outset that this is, that the only truth that exists is God and your desire to obtain and know that truth is all that matters and everything else is a lie. That's what you got to start out with. So I don't know about you, but I'm not ready to run and join. It's really weird, but that's what they embrace, so we'll go with it.

Now you understand, to begin with, some of the strange ideas that they've got here. Now I want to look at some of the other Christian science doctrines. Do you see at the very bottom of this second page, it says intime.org forward slash intro forward slash bible.html? If you go there, the Bible part is part of what's here. This site is a Christian science site, and they outlay all of their doctrine very clearly. I did not have to go to a bunch of Christian apologetics websites to learn about, you know, what is the Christian view in contrasting to this?

What do they actually teach? They're very clear and open and blatant about what they believe. So if you want to study up on this further and read more, you can read everything very conveniently on the internet for free. And they're more than glad to share it with you. They're not hiding anything. It's not like Mormonism where there's a whole bunch of stuff that you don't hear about. They just try to mostly present you with the nice moral, everybody get along, let's be happy and make spirit babies thing. This is very openly weird. I mean, they just don't hide anything.

Let's take a look at this heading here, the scriptures. The Christian scientists, and this is dealing with allegory, the Christian scientist doesn't understand the scriptures as literally valuable, but instead finds deeper meaning in allegory. And here's one of their theologians, wrote this here, it is becoming more and more apparent to thinking people that a material viewpoint of the Bible brings to the reader uncertainty, confusion, and frequently contradictory statements. Spiritually interpreted, the Bible proves to be wholly consistent and enables the student to apply its teachings and prove the law of God given therein in the way Christ Jesus did and commanded his followers to do.

Obviously I'm a skeptic, I'm sorry. I don't think that you will find uncertainty, confusion, and frequently contradictory statements in the scripture. And I'm very concerned how you know how to spiritually interpret the Bible. How could you, as a person in the body, be able to spiritually interpret the Bible so that you could confirm that which Mary Baker Eddy says?

Can anyone come up with a way to do it? because I haven't heard anybody yet, but if you do, we'll write it up and we'll publish it in a theological journal and you'll be famous. There's no way for you to confirm it because your spiritual interpretation is not based on the actual text and context and the historical content and the language and the way it was written and the culture. It's based on you putting some idea together that is some kind of synthesis of what's there, but is not rooted in something that anyone else can verify. So, it's much easier to spiritualize everything, and then it's all consistent.

Well, you can't argue against Mary Baker Eddy's teachings with the Bible, if they don't take the Bible literally. But the Bible says this. It says, I am back with Moses, and Christ says, I am. Which one is it? Well, you're taking it literally. That's the problem. You're making a contradiction that doesn't need to be there. There's a whole lot less contradictions if you take it literally and aren't trying to force bad theology on it. So that's a humdinger there. Let's read this next quote here. It's a Science and Health page 324 through 8.

Metaphors abound in the Bible, and names are often expressive of spiritual ideas. The most distinguished theologians in Europe and America agree that the scriptures have both a spiritual and literal meaning, except for they don't have a literal meaning when it's inconvenient, but they mostly have a spiritual meaning. That's like when you see those gum commercials, nine out of 10 dentists recommend our gum, and they show the other dentist is a moron or something like that. Just saying a bunch of people think this doesn't make it true at all. Yes, Tom.

Yeah, for those of you listening on tape, you need the Holy Spirit to work in your lives to reveal the truth of God's Word. If you're walking in the flesh, you can twist it any direction you might so come up with. So, obviously, it's clear that they have an allegorical interpretation, and it's easy for us to not argue with them, because we can't. because we don't use their allegorical interpretation system. So communicating with them either asks them to bring into question their whole system by asking them to actually read the text literally, or we just ask them to, hey, just abandon that thing you're believing and come to my truth, which of course would be not very useful except for that If they've already abandoned logic, maybe they'll try it.

Come try this out. You drank their Kool-Aid, come drink mine. I promise it doesn't have as much poison in it. I'm sorry, I shouldn't reference like that. See, that's like the second time I've taught and mentioned death. So, the next heading I've got here is Satan or the Devil. And this one right here, this one I find incredibly interesting because I don't know how they deal with all the references in scripture to the devil, because they redefine who he is, I guess, they don't have to do it. The devil is evil, a lie, an error, neither a corporeality nor mind, the opposite of truth, a belief in sin, sickness and death, animal magnetism or hypnotism, the lust of the flesh, which says, I am life and intelligence and matter, There is more than one mind, for I am mind, a wicked mind, self-made or created by a tribal god and put into the opposite of mind, termed matter, thence to reproduce a mortal universe, including man, not after the image and likeness of spirit, but after its own image."

Did you follow that? Satan doesn't exist, basically. It's just a figment of a bunch of weird tribal people who came up with junk. Satan doesn't exist. So God speaking of Satan in a literal fashion means that either God was confused, or that he was just addressing the idea of somebody lying. You just run into problems over and over and over again if you just follow... if you try to use logic, it becomes problematic. So we'll skip logic from here forward, okay?

Well, I'll try. And you'll notice that the intellect is really critical within Christian science. This next quote should be a real clincher. Mind is God. Right there, we could stop and just walk away and say, I'm done because this is stupid, but we'll keep going because you didn't come here just to hear me say they're dumb. Mind is God. The exterminator of error is the great truth that God, good, the only mind, and that the supposition or supposititious opposite of infinite mind, called devil or evil, is not mind, is not truth, but error without intelligence or reality. So again, the devil is not real. If you think that the devil is real, it's just a false mind that you've had in your head.

It's just so weird. I'm sorry. I wish I could say more, but I just keep saying that. Every time I would read a quote, I would just ask myself... It reminds me of Alice in Wonderland. Do you remember the story of Alice in Wonderland? I think I read the book once when I was a little kid. And then, of course, I saw the Disney movie. There's just this weird intertwining of things, but none of it's real, and it could all be different tomorrow. It just doesn't gel. But remember, evil is not real. It's a bad mindset.

But, and here's the clincher, if you have a bad mindset when you die, you're going to go to hell. Because hell is real, even though evil is not. Hell is where evil people go because they were evil because they believed in evil. But otherwise, if they didn't believe in evil, they wouldn't be evil and they would go to heaven, which is to be one in mind with God. So, hell. Science and Health, page 588, first sentence. Hell, mortal belief. Hell is to believe in mortality, error, lust, remorse, hatred, revenge, sin, sickness, death, suffering, and self-destruction.

Self-imposed agony, because remember, if you're believing right, you won't feel pain. I'm sorry, I started being logical again. You use, let's see, agony, effects of sin, that which worketh abomination and maketh a lie. So, hell is self-imposed. Remember that. If I'm having a hard day, it's self-imposed.

That's hell. Then the next quote there, I'm asked, is there a hell? Yes, there is a hell for all who persist in breaking the golden rule or disobeying the commandments of God. What's the golden rule? I'm sorry. Do unto others. He who has the gold makes all the rules. Do unto others as you would like them to be doing to you. That's the golden rule.

Or disobeying the commandments of God. Which commandments of God should we not disobey? Should we not disobey all 613? Should we not disobey the 10? Which ones? Oh, I will use my special allegorical interpretation and I'll pick the ones that you shouldn't disobey. The commands of God, it's used in a broad brushstroke thing. I couldn't find any actual listing out of the 613 that we should or should not actually adhere ourselves to. It's not listed.

That's right. If you don't believe that it's sin because sin is something you believe in, you're set. So I'm not too worried about going to hell. Oh, that murder would not be okay, but see, you're only harming a problematic matter substance, because matter is really the problem, because it's not spiritual. I know some of you are giving me looks like, are you crazy?

No, I'm not. That's just what they teach. You're trying to look for reason and logic here, and you're looking in the wrong place. So that's hell. The next one I've got here is Christ in salvation. And I might actually make it all the way through here before my lesson's over, or time's up. Jesus didn't suffer for your sins specifically. You get to do that for yourself. Science and health page 23, sentence 5.

That God's wrath should be vented upon his beloved son is divinely unnatural. Such a theory is man-made. The Atonement is a hard problem in theology, but its scientific explanation is that suffering is an error of sinful sense, which truth destroys, and that eventually both sin and suffering will fall at the feet of everlasting love. So God did not vent his wrath on Christ.

That is a very silly idea. he's going to vent his wrath on you for your sins, which you will hopefully realize are not sins, so that he'll stop venting his wrath on you and you'll be forgiven. This needs another flowchart like that Catholic one my dad had. The next, yeah, I don't know, it'd be like a downward spiral, it just keeps going. The next quote I've got here, Science and Health page 11, sentences 12 through 18, and this is one I, I read through this and I was just stunned, so forgive me, it's a little longer.

Our mere legal pardon, and there is no other, for divine principle never pardons our sins or mistakes till they are corrected. Okay, now let's stop right there, just because I can't believe it. There is no other, for divine principle never pardons our sins or mistakes till they are corrected. How do you correct a sinner mistake?

You go to her department of corrections. Apparently, yeah, her department of corrections. Well, what do you do if you have sinned against somebody in scripture? They say, hey, you should go and deal with it. Ask for forgiveness. Oh, that's a novel concept. That's it. So you can deal with it that way.

But what do you do if somebody's passed away and you still have issues that are still lingering for you emotionally or mentally that are going on there? I sinned against that person. What do you do? As a believer, you go to the Lord and you say, Lord, this is something that only you can deal with.

And you move on. Because you know that your position is secure, your salvation is secure, and you're identified with Christ. So he paid for your sins. Well, in this case, you don't get that. You get, oops, I'm on the wrong page. Here we go. Until they're corrected, how do you correct a sin? You cannot correct it. Therefore, God's legal pardon of you has not taken place. You are not legally pardoned until you've corrected it somehow. At some point in time, you can't do that. So you have to either give up or just hope that you're gonna get in by the skin of your teeth. Because, let's see, mere legal pardon leaves the offender free to repeat the offense if indeed he has not already suffered sufficiently from vice to make him turn from it without loathing, or with loathing, I'm sorry.

So if you turn from your sin, you need to do it with loathing, not rejoicing that the Lord is your life. Yes, which sin? The sin that doesn't exist. The sin that you don't believe in anymore is what you're returning from with loathing, loathingly realizing that you didn't sin because it doesn't exist. I know I shouldn't make fun of it, except for that I just can't believe that they actually say this. Truth bestows no pardon upon error, but wipes it out in the most effectual manner.

Jesus suffered for our sins not to annul the divine sentence for an individual's sin, but because sin brings inevitable suffering. Sin must bring suffering. You will suffer for it until you realize that it doesn't exist. But Jesus suffered for your sins too. Why? I don't know. They didn't exist if I believe in them. I don't know. I wish I could make this stuff up and make the money that she made, but then I'd go to hell.

So let's not do that. Instead, we'll just teach the truth and move on. The next one here, and this is the last one on salvation in Christ. The at-one-ment with Christ has appeared, not through vicarious suffering, whereby the just obtain a pardon for the unjust, but through the eternal law of justice, wherein sinners suffer for their own sins, repent, forsake sin, love God, and keep His commandments, which ones we don't know, thence to receive the reward of righteousness, salvation from sin, not through the death of a man, but through a divine life, which is our Redeemer." I wish I could explain it, but I can't. It's just goofy. I mean, if you were trying to write up some kind of flow chart or some kind of description of what's going on or some legal document, you couldn't, it's just freaky.

The last thing I wanted to go over, and this is important, this ties in with the Trinity as well, is the Holy Spirit. The Holy Ghost or the Holy Spirit is not part of the Trinity. Instead, we see that it, because it's just a force of truth, is pure Christian science doctrine. So the Holy Spirit is the embodiment or the entity, if you can even call it that, that is pure science or pure Christian science doctrine.

Science and Health, page 55, sentence 27. In the words of St. John, he shall give you another comforter that he may abide with you forever. This comforter I understand to be divine science. So the comforter And now I don't know how on earth they explain away Acts chapter two, but we'll just pretend that the tongues of fire was just the divine science coming down.

Yes, Tom. That's right. The Holy Spirit is our divinely copyrighted trademark. That's their special truth. Wow. The next and last quote, and then we have any other questions we can ask. Although, as you can tell, it's kind of hard to ask questions about this because you don't get anywhere. Holy Ghost, Divine Science, the Development of Eternal Life, Truth, and Love. So that's how she defined the Holy Ghost. Divine Science, the Development of Eternal Life, Truth, and Love. What's the draw of this? Well, the thing is that this is spirituality. It's spiritual, but you're in charge. It's a very well-constructed draw to the flesh.

Because while, yeah, this isn't logical, you don't need logic, because logic tells you that you sin. There's a sense of ought. There's a sense of, hey, this is wrong, and I need to get this rectified with God. Well, this is between you and you alone. God has put the truth out there, now you do it. Fix yourself, gosh darn it, and if you're hurting, fix that too by realizing that you're not hurting, and you're not sinning, and that you're not obviously one with the divine science.

It's hard. I wish I could explain it in a way that could be logical and make sense, and you'd go, oh, that's what they believe. But I've just told you what they believe, and it's hard for it to all fit together in a logical package that you can walk away with and go, oh, well, I know how to combat that.

It's hard to combat somebody who's abandoned reason altogether. If you go to argue with somebody who believes in some kind of medical situation, we could talk about something like abortion, we could discuss the physiological damage that's caused to bodies sometimes when abortion takes place, or that there's a heart beating in the baby, or something like that. You can't have that kind of argument with a Christian scientist, because that baby doesn't even exist, because the babies just matter in a soul. How do you have an argument with somebody whose logic doesn't really have logic?

It has a whole system of pure faith, of a purely spiritual element that you can't question. The number one thing that you can do, if I were to recommend something, is to present to them the love of Christ, and then go to Scripture, and only go to Scripture, and ask them to read and explain to you the text of Scripture from what it says.

Because that's forcing them to step outside of Mary Baker Eddy and ask, what does it say? You can read Mary Baker Eddy and laugh, but they've already done that and they liked it. They didn't laugh. So then you have to go to the Bible, as we saw on the first page, they consider to be inspired. They say, okay, it's inspired, what do we do with it? That's where you have to go, because you can't go into their system and reason their way out of it because they've already abandoned reason within the system. So you get to have lots of fun going to the Word.

The truth is that these people are sinners. They know that they have some kind of problem, so they deal with the problem by saying it doesn't exist. And instead of the blood of Christ being effective to pay for all of their sins so that they may be united with God in His love, not just truth, but His love, they have a lot of works ahead of them that they're going to be doing from their truth.

Any other questions? I don't know that I'll be able to answer them because, quite frankly, what I did read was overwhelming for my brain to just process and try to divide. I tried to come up with a system so I could explain it to you all and I just fell. It's holier than Swiss cheese. I mean it's like, come on. You hold it up and you go, what am I supposed to do with that?

If you want to read Mark Twain's The whole book, the second chapter goes on with more silliness, but then he actually gets into some serious stuff discussing it. I wouldn't recommend you drawing lots of theology from it, but he points out some of the errors of their doctrine or their ideas. It's public domain. You can search online for Mark Twain Christian Science, and it comes up as the first result on Google. I imagine it does on other search engines.

I own the book. I don't know where it is. I'd have brought it in, but I couldn't find it. We don't have our bookshelves organized like I used to when I was at the Christian bookstore. I could find everything there, but it was all organized by system. I had memorized at home.

We have a three-year-old. I don't know what else to say. So any other questions or thoughts before we close in prayer? I'm sorry, what? She's not in charge of our books, but there have been times we've come down and found them in various positions around the floor. Any questions or thoughts before we close in prayer? They rang the second bell. I'm pretty sure Roy's going to clip it off before I pray.

All right. Heavenly Father, we ask that you would just allow us to have a good rest of the day and that you would allow us to stay focused on you. Lord, thank you for the physical bodies that you created that you told us about in Genesis. Thank you that they're a part of our sanctification for our growth. Lord, we ask that you would, when we come in contact with these people, be loving in our approach to them so that they would know what truth and love are in a biblical context. We thank you and we praise you in Jesus' name, Amen.