God hates Tornadoes. in Talk Radio

My aunt whose birthday party was last week took myself, my cousin and my mom out to eat at Cracker Barrel, where I had some awesome pancakes with bacon.

They have a gift shop my mother loves mostly full of gaudy items like American flag pinwheels. (When did beanie babies become so ugly?) But they had a few cool things, like mushroom salt and pepper shakers, a pop-up book about pirates and a notebook with a fabulous peacock on it. My mom had already bought a peacock notebook so she gave it to me.

I must like notebooks because they are pretty; When I had them I never wrote in them. I have a collection of old notebooks with the first dozen pages written in and the rest empty. The last such notebook is from 2005.

Now I have an almost empty peacock notebook with one page written an anecdote from my mom. Setting the scene for some other story she never started, she described the novelty of wearing jeans in high school. Previously girls were only allowed to wear dresses or skirts.

My parents were born in the 50s and seem older than most parents of people my age. They would have approximately been the age of Don Draper’s children in Mad Men.

On Sunday I went to a Christian Science church to see my aunt sing her solo. Sounds like an oxymoron, but that’s what they call themselves. It doesn’t seem to have much to do with academic science as we know it, but a sort of metaphysical interpretation of Christianity.

My 90 year old Grandpa has been a Christian Scientist since the beginning of time, pretty much. When my mom first tried to explain how it worked, I was really into The Matrix. Christian Science believes all matter is not real, it just seems real, kind of like the computer simulated world of the Matrix. Jesus not literally God, he’s just the most famous somebody who knows it’s not real and uses that knowledge to preform tricks and defy death much like Neo. But the fake world analogous to the Matrix is not based on the real world (or the real world as it was in the past). The real world is an entirely spiritual world of minds.

I was listening to a Christian Scientist radio program on the way to their service and they shared a quaint story from a listener letter: “My house was in the path of a tornado so I prayed for it to go away and it hit an empty field instead of my house. Praise the Lord!”

This was an intro to a discussion about climate change. They had a legitimate scientist on to explain how it exists and is in fact man-made and dangerous. And another guest to explain how the best solution is to pray for it to go away.

My obvious reaction to this idea is, do you think New Orleans forgot to pray when Katrina hit them? What about the more than 200,000 fatalities caused by the 2004 tsunami? Or any bad thing that has happened in the history of the world to someone who prayed? (Westboro Baptist church actually has a simple answer to this question: Everyone but us are heretics that God hates so they deserve to die.)

But the Christian Scientists think they can accomplish just about anything with prayer and belief including miraculous healing, which is a huge thing of theirs; There is no spoon and there is no cancer. If you’ve ever heard of Christian Science before it’s probably from a story about an extreme practitioner who refuses life-saving medical treatment in favor of trying to cure with prayer.

In my experience, most Christian Scientists like to have more options than just prayer…my Grandpa went to the hospital when he got cancer and takes prescriptions to control blood pressure while refusing medicine for non-threatening little conditions like headaches. I know this because before my mother moved in there would be no Advil for me when I got a headache while visiting. That seemed pretty strange before I knew the explanation.

My aunt’s family definitely aren’t hardcore Christian Scientists either.

Their textbook is called Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures written by their founder, a lady named Mary Baker Eddy. It seems like it’s almost as important as the bible to them. The service is very simple, singing, then readings from the Bible with related passages from Science and Health, followed by more singing. They express a desire to avoid preachers who will fuck up the message. Makes for a boring service, but seems like an admirable decision, for a church.

Afterward me and some friends of my family met at a Wendy’s where I had a milk shake, chicken nuggets, and leftover cake from the birthday party. Overall I’m pleased with these events.

Last updated July 09, 2019