“Take Me to Your Ladder, I’ll See Your Leader Later”
Week 43 of 52 Churches in 52 Weeks:
Flying Solo at the Church of Scientology in St. Paul, Minnesota
I had come in peace.
My latest church odyssey had me trekking across the religious cosmos, landing in the unknown world of Scientology. Founded by sci-fi writer L. Ron Hubbard, many critics consider it a celeb-filled religion located on the outer reaches of the spiritual Milky Way.
Who knows? Maybe I watched too many UFO episodes of Unsolved Mysteries as a kid. As I was going to churches that no one had gone before, I had to know what a Scientology Sunday service was like. With previous church explorations, I often had conspiracy theories that were proven wrong after I’d set foot in new places of worship. If there was any church that had been abducted by HBO documentaries and national news headlines, it was the Church of Scientology. Could I give a fair shake to such a controversial religion — taking one small step for curiosity, one giant leap for understanding?
This was one of the questions orbiting my mind when I met the Scientology chaplain.
He introduced himself with this icebreaker:
“So there was an astronaut who landed on an alien planet inhabited by several beautiful women. When he climbed out of his spaceship, he was approached by the women, who were all some 20 feet taller. One came up to him and asked, ‘I suppose you want to see the leader?’ The astronaut looked up at her, and replied:
“’Take me to your ladder. I’ll see your leader later.’”
My eyes lit up like the USS Enterprise with its brights on. I wasn’t sure how to react. He shook my hand and laughed, his warped sense of humor expanding into a wide grin that was the size of the Hubble Space Telescope.
‘What have I gotten myself into this week’, I thought to myself.
August 23, 2015 — 10:30am Sunday Service: Church of Scientology in St. Paul, Minnesota
I was more nervous than a kitten in an Alf episode for this spiritual encounter.
I knew very little about Scientology — other than Tom Cruise was a member and there was a rumor he once tried to eat a placenta (don’t ask). The night before, I had visions of being lowered into the church by a wire-rope, dangling just centimeters above the floor in a reenactment of Mission: Impossible. I wasn’t sure how the Church of Scientology would welcome newcomers (even IF they would welcome newcomers). I had been to over 40 churches, most aligned with my Christian beliefs. I wanted to remain neutral as a Christian standing alongside Scientologists, but at the same time, didn’t want my visit to turn into some religious War of the Worlds.
Flying solo, I opened the front door and walked in. Easy peezy. No delicate acrobatics required or alien lights to suck me up. I was greeted by two ladies sitting behind a desk. I requested to attend the church service, and was asked by one of the attendants to fill out my contact information and then follow her. ‘Great, that wasn’t so hard’ I thought. She led me to a modern dining room and gave me the tiniest water bottle I’d ever seen. She seated me and asked me to wait. So I waited. And waited. And waited some more with my miniature water bottle as my only companion.
After waiting for so long, I started feeling like a spy having infiltrated a religion where I was cautious of getting caught. This is when questions began to probe my brain. ‘Why am I waiting by myself?’ ‘Where is the church service located?’ ‘Why would they take my contact information?’
As the questions began mounting, I realized that the service time was 10 minutes past. Being an outsider, I got antsy and walked back to the front desk. Before I could ask the receptionist what the Dalek was going on, that’s when the chaplain walked up to me and introduced himself with his alien joke. At first, I wanted to ‘E.T. phone home’. But it was too late to turn back now.
We’ll call him George. He was dressed to the nines in black preacher’s garb that was accented with a clerical collar. He sat down with me smelling of fresh Marlboro, and we chit-chatted about his expedition into Scientology and oak furniture. My interview with the Scientologist reduced some of my anxiety, but like the Alien Queen embryo that was growing inside Ripley in Alien 3, the thought had impregnated my mind and was ready to burst out of me: ‘If the pastor is with me… where is everyone else?’
“Well, I guess it’s just us today,” he answered my thoughts, making me question if I should have brought an aluminum foil hat.
Instead of taking me straight to the worship area, George took the long way to grandmother’s house by giving me the full tour. He explained that typically there was five regulars, but several of them must have been scheduled to work on site that day. The Church of Scientology in St. Paul was a state-of-the-art mega-center, having formerly been a science museum. From what George showed me, there were several interactive displays for click-and-play videos where a simple push of the button would explain in detail several key concepts, including the core fundamentals of Scientology.
One of these principles was the idea of Dianetics, which was the book that Hubbard used to propel Scientology as a new religion. George pointed out that our minds are essentially recording every sight, sound, taste, smell, emotion, and touch in our life. These recordings are called the ‘time track’, a consecutive record of all experiences accumulated throughout your existence. Your mind uses accumulated information to make decisions and solve problems for survival. Most of this data is stored in your analytical mind that thinks, remembers, and calculates.
The other part of the mind is the reactive mind, which throws bad experiences back at you in an irrational attempt to avoid the same painful thing from happening to you again (like getting shot at, going through a major break-up, or watching Hubbard’s movie adaption of Battlefield Earth). Later in life, if a situation arises that could feel like deja vu, the reactive mind re-experiences that recorded incident to protect you, reacting solely on a stimulus response basis. Our painful experiences are the cause of fears, insecurities, and irrational behavior. Dianetics reveal how these negative responses are stored and how to free them. To help with this, Scientology will audit individuals with the gold-plated Mark Ultra VIII e-meter, with the auditee holding what looks like two silver cans.
We eventually went up a twisting staircase to the second floor, the ‘take me to your ladder, I’ll see your leader later’ joke becoming increasingly true to life. The chapel was hidden in a constellation of offices, eventually leading into a curved hallway. When George opened up the doors, we walked into a gigantic lecture hall/chapel/conference room. The room was impressive, with a capacity of 300 cushion seats, a spotless black grand piano, and gigantic IMAX screen. At the center of it all was the podium with the Scientology symbol attached.
Since I was the only congregant, George mentioned that he had a lecture picked out but to chime-in if I had questions during the service. George began with the Creed of Scientology, which he interrupted himself at various points to inform me of random facts. After the Creed, he went into his sermon called “You Can Be Right”. I would like to write about it — and George did his best, but most of it was way over my head.
George discussed something about the killing of a mosquito harms the animal kingdom and would be wrong. However, if you have a number of people in a room and the mosquito has malaria, then you better smash the mosquito. If you don’t stop a malaria-carrying mosquito to bite someone, it’s on you. Talk about your dangerous hypothetical situations!
After a 10-minute lecture on what’s right and wrong, he went into relationship arguments and how I should always find out why my girlfriend is right. For example, if she’s always burning dinner and it leads to several big arguments, I need to wipe out her wrongness by asking, “what is right about burning my dinner?”
As George explained, “This can evoke a raging tirade, but if one flattens the question which is by continuing to ask until it no longer produces the reaction, she will happily cease to burn dinner.”
“This can happen with your girlfriend…” he paused with a moment of political correctness. “…Or boyfriend.”
I guess whatever floats your boat. For me, my boat had sailed a long time ago.
When the day was done, my exploration into Scientology felt a lot like a first date.
The visit wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. No one asked me to take a personality test by holding the Ultra Mark VIII cans, or offered me a complimentary placenta for breakfast, and never once did Jerry Maguire come out to shout “show me the money” for an offering (although one of the pamphlets showed advanced lectures running for as little as $11,000). George was cool, the church was on it’s best behavior from what I saw, but deep down I knew it would never work. It’s not you, it’s me. I had to go see other churches. I had to end the spiritual courtship.
Fortunately, I discovered a silver lining from the visit though, especially when it comes to how others view my Christian faith. The way many Christians think about Scientology is probably similar to the way non-Christians think about Christianity. We pray. We praise. We eat the symbolized body and blood of our risen Savior. When you’re Christian for so long, you can easily forget how alien it may look to a non-believer.
Using Scientology’s idea of Dianetics, this experience helped ‘time track’ such a perspective in my analytical mind, recording every sensation from a unique visit.
But if someone uses another alien joke as an icebreaker, my reactive mind may just grab the nearest tin foil hat.
