Christian Science and the shell of it – breaking free

Since the time in ninth grade when my faith came alive for me, I’ve wanted to share it with others. And sometimes as I’ve tried to do so, a certain brittleness has come up - a sense that this wasn’t an area of interest to my conversation partner. The response would bewilder me, though I came to expect it. I couldn’t understand why someone wouldn’t want to hear about this great thing I had to offer. Lately I’m looking at it from a different perspective. I see several obvious reasons why these past communications were brittle and awkward.

First is the problem of trying to tell about something: As I’ve mentioned, feeling the lift of God’s presence is much like flying. All of my being is on a bright and moving edge; I am illumined; I feel myself at the cambium, the growing place where all things unfold in the fresh newness of being. But to share this with someone else, they have to feel it. They have to experience God’s love, with its assurance that nothing they’ve ever worried about has ever mattered, that they have always been beloved beyond imagining, which takes care of everything. Mere words, however inspired, don’t bring this about.

Second are the limits to my own life proof: Christian Scientists are taught to operate from a different paradigm from the one assumed by popular culture. It is a paradigm in which perfection is the starting point, goodness is substance, and bad things are considered insubstantial, and are expected to fall away. We operate from that standpoint when our experience corroborates that – when we live at the point of healing. But there is a question of how I am to be when I find myself waiting for understanding – waiting for the clarity which shows itself as healing. I think there is a need to be very humble and quiet in my faith. I need to be watchful that the starting point of perfection doesn’t devolve into perfectionism, in which, though I don’t feel myself perfect, I feel I should be, and expect others to be. This falls into the posturing and judging, the precarious maintaining of facades, so familiar to social-climbing America and so antithetical to Christ.

Related to that is a problem of language: When speaking of a different paradigm, it’s easy to convey the wrong impression. Perfection in Christ can sound like perfectionism; the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free can sound like a burdensome responsibility. This problem is even greater when I cease to know what I’m talking about – when my words get ahead of my experience and I speak from my notion of the theory instead of the understanding only found in love.

Finally, there’s the question of relationship: I guess I assumed that it would be good and helpful to others for me to impart inspiration, or at least information, in my communications. What I didn’t account for is that my desire to be the giver left others in the role of people who needed my help. Often, as it turns out, people don’t appreciate being cast in that role. So if I come along telling them that their lives will be much better if they only allow themselves to be moved by my insight and wisdom, or if they adopt aspects of my faith, I shouldn’t be surprised if they don’t respond with great enthusiasm.

So what does this all indicate? Even within my own faith I have felt the resistance to the things others resist. I, too, turn away from mere words and crave the authentic experience, the overwhelming sense of the God presence, that makes many words unnecessary, and makes the ones that are spoken perfect. It’s useful to start noticing what doesn’t work so I can stop trying to do it. It’s even more important to begin collecting the moments of perfect love that define everything I want to have and be. Recently, facing the need to comfort a loved one, I found myself choosing not to say thought after thought that came to mind. I felt that words of instruction, however insightful, would fall flat, and that even words of encouragement must not contradict his feelings. I needed to keep my own thought in the place of pure love. No words that strayed from this could be any use at all. What I shared was not important. What mattered was that the solid Love that holds the whole world together be felt by both of us. Listening in this way allowed the needed comfort to come in. It was conveyed in touch more than in words – touch guided by love.

Words about Christian Science are a mere shell of what I value. They are a shell that can be brittle, and that can keep the glorious essence from shining forth. By insisting to myself that I stay centered in truth, I can begin to break free of that shell. No longer do I feel the need to share the great truth that I have found with others. Instead, through my faith I can see the light that they are already shining. My sharing can be in appreciating what they are. Then it will be their words as much as mine that bring inspiration.