Throughout the twentieth century there have been "wars and rumours of wars"—from border skirmishes to revolutions to world wars. And even when one's own country has not been engaged in a conflict, still at almost any time during our era armies have been fighting somewhere on planet earth. For example, typical of recent years was 1983, which may have seemed to many a relatively peaceful year. Yet one study revealed that of the world's one hundred sixty-four nations, at least forty-five were involved in armed conflicts "with over 4 million soldiers directly engaged in combat." The Boston Herald, March 22, 1983.
It is not surprising that people may feel weighed down with uncertainty. And on the other hand, some are lulled into a false sense of security, thinking there is little need for concern merely because their own nation is not currently at war. In either case, the result is a tendency to do nothing when, in fact, there is so much to be done.
Christian Science gives us a better way to think and a truly potent course of action. For one thing, Christian Science clearly indicates the rightness and effectiveness of taking individual responsibility whenever there is a need for healing. This is true whether the need is for overcoming disease or sin in one's immediate experience or for dealing with broader issues in one's church, community, nation, or the world at large.
Whatever the difficulty, to be of real help we need to begin with our own consciousness. What are we thinking or not thinking about a situation? Are we awake and alert to what is going on around us? Are we looking beneath the surface to see what the underlying causes of a difficulty actually are? What are we holding in our hearts?
The answers to such questions, from a metaphysical point of view, are as important to furthering individual efforts toward the establishment of world peace as they are to bringing peace to some turmoil in one's own body or one's own family.
In Christian Science we learn that when we correct our thinking about the nature of reality—when our thought comes into conformity with Christ, Truth—there are direct changes in our lives. Through prayer, transformation of thinking brings transformation of body, or of business or home or whatever area of experience needs to be uplifted and redeemed, not excluding the wider sphere of world affairs in which we all have a stake. Transformation, regeneration, spiritual progress, are what healing is all about.
A biography of Mary Baker Eddy, the Founder of the Church of Christ, Scientist, points out that she was obviously concerned about the issues that confronted humanity in her day, including the dire need for peace among nations. She spoke and wrote of her concerns during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. But, as the biography states, "For Mrs. Eddy, the healing of the individual was still the basis on which the healing of the nations must rest. 'When that [i.e., individual healing] has taken hold of mankind,' she had told a socially minded student in 1886, 'the other will in time follow as a necessary sequence.'" Robert Peel, Mary Baker Eddy:The Years of Authority (New York:Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1977), p. 138.
Fundamental to this healing, this individual transformation of consciousness, is a willingness to let Christ, Truth, lead us to the realization of true being. It is necessary that we consciously move away from the kind of thinking that believes life to be constructed of and governed by matter. And then, through prayer, the Christ moves us toward the inspired recognition that Life is God, illimitable Spirit and Mind, and that as His creation, the universe, including man, must be entirely spiritual.
Christ Jesus, who was the Prince of Peace, demonstrated through his healing ministry that man's life is actually governed by divine Mind, perfect Principle. Understanding this fact of being progressively releases the individual from the belief (and its apparent effects) that existence is only a random series of circumstances, subject to chance, whim, or accident, and shaped by minds limited with ignorance, distrust, aggression, hatred, prejudice, and so on.
Only as these evils are eliminated from individual hearts will they fade from the heart of humanity as a whole. As our own heart is filled by Christ with spiritual love and true good will, we are animated to act in mankind's behalf as peacemakers. Our prayers are our guidepost; and our vision of spiritual reality gives strength, dominion, and purpose to our efforts.
Seeing reality in its deepest spiritual dimensions, understanding man to be the pure likeness of divine Love—this doesn't remove us to ivory towers of noninvolvement. It puts us right in the fray, where we take up arms—the spiritual truths that annihilate error—and begin to change the way we lead our lives, the way we respond to family, to friends, and to everyone else with whom we have contact. As the Apostle Paul writes, "Let the peace of God rule in your hearts, to the which also ye are called in one body; and be ye thankful." Col. 3:15.
Then, from heart to heart, Christ's peace can grow until every man, woman, and child is embraced and peace is no longer considered to be merely an evanescent human ideal but is seen to be a quality of God that is always present and forever unbreakable. Building peace on earth from the heart up provides a foundation that cannot be eroded, when the individual heart is first filled with that great gift of Christ—Truth's own eternal, spiritual peace. Even in a nuclear age, especially in a nuclear age, the way of Christ is the only way to a peace that truly lasts.
