Kenya . . . Pakistan . . . Darfur . . . Iraq . . . Israel and the Gaza Strip . . . Afghanistan . . . the list of places reports of violence are coming from is long enough that anyone can be excused for wondering how the mayhem can ever be stopped. But there is a way—a Christian, scientific way.
Anthology of Classic Articles, a book recently published by The Christian Science Publishing Society (buy the book; it's not the Bible or Science and Health, but it's really good), contains an article called "'As birds flying'" that includes this astounding statement:The sixth chapter of II Kings describes the manner in which Elisha the prophet handled the mesmeric suggestion of warfare which the king of Syria was trying to wage against the king of Israel.
Did you catch that? ". . . Elisha the prophet handled the mesmeric suggestion of warfare . . . ." There's a war raging around him, yet to Elisha it's not real; it's only a suggestion! And it's a suggestion he chooses not to accept, not because he's an idiot blind to the reality around him but because he's a very intelligent guy very much aware of the spiritual reality which is actually all around and that has very definite effects on humanity. And it has effects in this instance, as another paragraph from the article explains:This is a clear example of the fact that the enemy is aggressive animal magnetism, or mesmerism, and not persons. Elisha did not hold it against the persons who were instruments of animal magnetism, nor did he try to make a treaty or carry on a truce with the error. He proved the power of God, Mind, and His ideas to be victorious over the arguments of the material senses and their mesmeric suggestions. The outcome of the whole situation was that "the bands of Syria came no more into the land of Israel." Elisha's scientific handling of error's claims made it impossible for them ever to return.
Period. No more war. No more violence. Everybody home and happy and taking care of business. No prospect of violence returning. And all because somebody had the audacity to think that violence was only a suggestion rather than a reality and the spiritual and moral courage and conviction to declare God's perfect goodness.
This is the way Christian Science works. You don't—can't—scientifically heal disease by considering the disease real and then applying spiritual truths to counteract it. You have to realize that disease is unreal, simply a suggestion that no one has to accept. Then the spiritual truth—health—is seen in our lives.
But widespread violence, involving huge numbers of people and with effects paraded across our television screens and maybe outside our windows? Can that too possibly be only a suggestion? Can we grasp that all of it, in its totality, is entirely unreal?
Sound too tough for you? Figure you can't possibly get there? Well, you're right: it is too tough for you. But it's not too tough for God, and He's the one who does the work. Christ Jesus pointed this out repeatedly, saying things like "I can of mine own self do nothing" (John 5:30) and "the Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works" (John 14:10). Jesus didn't have to make good true and evil (disease, violence, whatever) only a suggestion. God had already made good true and all, which precluded the possibility of evil, so all Jesus had to do was love God, his fellow man, and this truth enough to get human sense and its arguments out of the way and so see only what God sees: perfect goodness. It's what Moses had discovered earlier. If he viewed himself as a mortal, he was wholly inadequate to lead his people out of mental slavery, but when he realized that God is the I AM (see Ex. 3:14), that he didn't have to view himself as a mortal but actually could see his identity as based in God, could see himself as God's expression . . . well, that opened up all sorts of possibilities.
Those possibilities are open to all of us today too. Like Elisha, each one of us can completely defuse violence by realizing that it's only a suggestion and by letting our consciousness be what it in fact can only be: an expression of God, the divine Mind, Principle. As Mary Baker Eddy writes in Science and Health (p. 415), "Mind in every case is the eternal God, good." (That statement is quoted in "Healing the 'incurable,'" another fantastic article in Anthology of Classic Articles. Did I mention you should get that book?)
Have I proved all this entirely? Nope. But I try to honestly say more and more, and with more and more clarity, "Into thine hand I commit my spirit" (Ps. 31:5); that is, I try to get a presumed human self out of the way and be only God's expression, to express only God's goodness, intelligence, and love and to let nothing else into consciousness. As we summon the humility to give this our best shot, earnestly striving to do better and better, we won't get caught up in suggestive material circumstances or make a truce with them, but the day will come when "God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away" (Rev. 21:4).
Link
The Christian Science Monitor — "Out of Kenya's violence, rebirth"
