Christian Science

During the late winter or early spring of 1953, I drove with my folks down to San Diego for a visit with Marold and Jeanne. After their marriage, Marold was in the navy and stationed there for awhile. I guess I showed my folks such places as Muir Woods, and of course there were visits with the Gust Knocks and the Uddens. But I have a rather poor recollection of sightseeing or visiting beyond that.

It was during my parents’ stay with me that my association with Jean began. When it developed that Jean was a Christian Scientist, my parents were distressed, particularly my mother. Her traditional and conventional viewpoint of Christianity placed Christian Science outside the pale of acceptable doctrine. I guess at the time my viewpoint still retained enough of my childhood training and indoctrination that I felt there was some basis for this opinion. In a way the confrontation (if it was as strong as that between my parents and me) only served in the long run to further weaken my regard for traditional Christianity.

My attitude toward Christian Science has softened I guess since my feelings during this period, but I still regard the basic teaching as unfounded. As for the founder, Mrs. Eddy, what little I have read of her writings stamps her as a rather befuddled elderly female with a proclivity for reading material that she was incapable of fathoming and building on this a fanciful dogma, unsupported by the real world.

I have attended a few Christian Science services and to me they have an aura of unreality — that thinking humans could take what was being read or said seriously. In a way my reaction now extends to the conventional protestant services I now attend on a limited schedule. So I suppose that Christian Science has served to direct my thinking although largely in sort of negative way.

There is one aspect of Christian Science that appeals to me, and that is the implicit acceptance of natural processes in the realm of living or dying. This is not the way a Christian Scientist would describe his beliefs, but that is what they fundamentally are. During my lifetime I have had three major surgeries, two of which were critical in determining life or death. Actually the last surgery was corrective, the medical procedure which determine life or death was the emergency procedure before it.

In retrospect I rather feel that the prolonging of my life, particularly in the ruptured appendix occurrence, was not necessarily the best outcome, either for me or others involved. In many respects life is a burden, not a gift, and it is a condition imposed will-nilly on individuals who never have any way in the matter. Once in existence a person is dominated by the instinct to live and survive. It is a mistake I think to attribute any basic goodness to this feeling of the intrinsic worth of live and living. You simply “are,” and that is about all that can be said.

When one is alive, one appreciates the physical environment, relatives, friends, occurrences, but underneath this facade of enjoyment and acceptance there is the underlying reality of the real meaningless of existence. This is not what Christian Scientists would say they believe but I think their conduct has elements of it.

Be that as it may, my association with Jean was interrupted during much of the summer of 1953 by a feeling of mutual disagreement in the field of religion. In Jean’s case it was a holding to a way of life that had served her well; in my case it was a feeling that Christian Science had so little obvious reality and was basically at odds with conventional Christianity that it was an inseparable barrier between us.

In the end the breach was subordinated to the attractions we felt between us and we resumed our earlier relationship. We were married in November of that year. As the Lutheran church of which I was a member (Bethany, on University Avenue in Berkeley) had some church function on that day we had selected, we used a church on Durant (?) for the site of the marriage.

This church no longer stands — it was later torn down for some reason. The pastor of the church (Ross Hidy?) was of the feeling that marriage services in the edifice should be conducted by the resident pastor; in the end he capitulated to the extent that Gust Knock was the minister really conducting the marriage, although Hidy was in attendance. I think one reason that he consented was that he knew the Knock family quite well. Since we knew the Knock family and appreciated them in man ways we were happy that the compromise was reached. In a way the incident further diminished my regard for church officialdom, with its attitude of parochialism.