Safety is valued by most human beings. The assured safety of one's body, home, income, employment, church, is usually thought of as an important element in happiness. Christian Science explains that safety is found in Spirit, God, rather than in matter. Basic safety is a state guaranteed by the unchanging allness of Spirit rather than an outcome of well-ordered matter.
The truth is that man lives spiritually, not physically, and that Spirit, not matter, is his environment. A deep sense of safety can be built on this basis. It is not the real man but an inverted sense of man that seems to be endangered by crime in the streets and recklessness on the roads. It is not the manifestation of God that is threatened by pollution and exposed to bodily suffering but a counterfeit man of mortal mind's creating. Illegitimate mortal mind is itself vulnerable and destructible, and its illusory objectifications, like their apparent cause, are vulnerable and destructible.
While we identify ourselves with a corruptible physical body and a shatterable human personality instead of with our spiritual individuality, we must always feel more or less unsafe. Threats may seem to come from different directions as mortal belief fluctuates and changes course, but they are always lurking in the shadows of mortal mind. For instance, forty years ago many felt that their jobs and their families were imperiled by the economic conditions prevailing then. Now, the same men may feel financially secure but apprehensive when they drive on a busy modern highway. But in the measure that we identify ourselves with true being we remove insecurity in any form.
