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Your Questions & Answers

Following the example in the early Journals when Mary Baker Eddy was Editor, this column will respond to general queries from Journal practitioners and teachers. Readers are also encouraged to go to Chapter III of Miscellaneous Writings 1883–1896, by Mary Baker Eddy — “Questions and Answers.”

How can people have such a blind spot when it comes to killing?

From the July 2012 issue of The Christian Science Journal


Q: I am a longtime reader of the Christian Science periodicals. But there is one thing that bothers me very much. With so many articles I have read over the years, I have encountered a few instances where Christian Scientists are involved with activities or livelihood related with killing, such as hunting, fishing, firearm restoration, etc. How can people who have such a deep insight about Christ-love, as taught by Mary Baker Eddy, have what seems to be such a blind spot when it comes to killing? I don’t mean to criticize, but just want to be clear on Christian Scientists’ stand on this. —A longtime reader

A1: This thoughtful question is one that I grappled with for a number of years. One sunny afternoon I was in the garden on our rural property when I witnessed our neighbors slaughtering a steer for food. Although the process was considered humane, this scene so shook me that I couldn’t stop crying for most of the day. 

I realized that my sense of life needed to be more spiritually based. For ten years I prayed to find a better sense of life that can’t be killed, and a sense of nature that is divine and not brutish. 

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