15 Minutes with CS People
It’s striking how the cults emphasize being nice as a proof of their connection to God. I hung out yesterday for 15 minutes with about 20 of these nice people from CS Fellowship.
How did that happen? I showed up very early to preach at a church yesterday morning. The church meets in a hotel and, when I arrived, I noticed signs standing on the hotel property promoting another gathering—a CS Fellowship. The yard signs pointed the way to the meeting in the lower level of the hotel. I had a lot of extra time before I was to be at the church, so I decided to check out CS Fellowship.
Turns out that the CS stands for Christian Science. I wandered down the stairs into their meeting room. I had my big study Bible, and I sensed the three greeters looking me over as I walked into the room. I took a seat in the last row. Seated on bar stools at the front was a 55-ish pony-tailed man with a guitar and a similar matronly woman holding a stack of papers. Mics stood in front of them. If the walls weren’t so clean and white, it would have looked something like you’d see at a coffee house.
And this man and woman were really nice, especially the woman. She had a sweet smile and articulated beautifully as she read announcements about their classic and contemporary services, small group Bible studies, summer meeting schedule. She quoted from what she called their Mother Church. Also included a few quotes from their founder, Mary Baker Eddy, on love and truth.
Then they played a long video solo song they called God is Love. It featured photos of mountains and forests and lakes. I don’t remember the lyrics. But I thought, Wow, the words are so soft and introspective . . . and the photos are so amazingly beautiful. It’s so . . . nice, nice, nice. They’re tiptoeing on fluffy clouds of niceness and they want me to join them.
They also read the Lord’s Prayer from Matthew 6, but the man-woman team upfront tag-teamed on the verses and added interpretations. One accurately read a short portion of the prayer, then the other added interpretations that you couldn’t possibly get from the prayer itself. The man said Our Father, then the woman tag-teamed it into something about mother god.
Then another tag-team reading, quoting another section from the Bible and an odd interpretation from their Mother Church and Mary Baker Eddy after each Bible verse.
Enough of this nice for me. As I left, I waded through the smiles of the swell-wishers who still stood at the door. They’re such nice people. But nice isn’t in the Bible. Of course, the Bible does have 2 Corinthians 11:12-15.
