Enchanted, But Let's Hope Not Enchante

Every child receives over the years an education of some kind. The few and fortunate are those who grow up steeped in Christian Science. Many get the traditional pedagogy of school and home, some dehumanizing tutelage in various Dickensian Dotheboys Halls (Wackford Squeers, Prop.), while still others are abandoned to the messy hurly-burly of OJT in the ways of all flesh. Only the schoolroom of pure Christianity will lead assuredly to a happy ending.

Plato writes in "The Republic" (Jowett translation): "Everything that deceives may be said to enchant." I wonder if some apathetic souls among us are not betimes a trifle jaded with animal magnetism and even aggressive mental suggestion, seeing them as persistently cranky and irritating, stoically resigned to their presence as members of their mental families, but not opposing vigorously, as they should, these errors and their vile offspring with all the strength of Spirit they possess. Bruno Bettelheim makes some interesting points in the Introduction to his book "The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales": "If we hope to live not just from moment to moment, but in true consciousness of our existence, then our greatest need and most difficult achievement is to find meaning in our lives. It is well known how many have lost the will to live, and have stopped trying, because such meaning has evaded them." And further: "To find deeper meaning, one must become able to transcend the narrow confines of a self-centered existence and believe that one will make a significant contribution to life--if not right now, then at some future time. This feeling is necessary if a person is to be saatisfied with himself and what he is doing." And: "Since the child at very moment of his life is exposed to the society in which he lives, he will certainly learn to cope with its conditions, provided his inner resources permit him to do so. [new para.] Just because his life is often bewildering to him, the child needs even more to be given the chance to understand himself in this complex world with which he must learn to cope."

Obviously Bettelheim is approaching the human experience from a wholly material standpoint, one which has nothing in common with Christian Science and sees the enchantment of fairy tales as an aid in personal development, but knowing this does not free one from the influence of this generally accepted view of man. Bettelheim's Freudian psychology may be passe these days, but its replacement is just as materialistic and must be rejected if one is to demonstrate Christian Science. False education is an incubus which cannot be flicked off casually from a mental lapel like a speck of dirt.

Mary Baker Eddy writes in "Science and Health" (p. 62): "The entire education of children should be such as to form habits of obedience to the moral and spiritual law, with which the child can meet and master the belief in so-called physical laws, a belief which breeds disease." Many adults would also benefit from a rigorous re-education along those lines. Those who missed the opportunity and blessing of a thorough Christian education are certainly not comdemned to an eternal limbo, but it is going to require some serious scrubbing of mental abodes and the application of liberal doses of strong spiritual disinfectant to put things right. The echantments of mortal mind may seem harmless at times, even, well, enchanting, but they are never so and must be rooted out mercilessly and destroyed like the noxious weeds they are.