It's worthwhile stopping in our tracks to realize that violence is not simply an abstraction "out there"—a remote event in another neighborhood or country that we're safe from, to be dealt with only for others. Violence is not something simply to read about and be appalled by. It's a wake-up call to each of us. It's a challenge to look frankly within, to what's going on in our own mental world. And to discard what ought not be there, by replacing it with spiritual fact. The timeless fact is that our real being is the outcome of God, and can only express His entirely good nature. Working from this basis to jettison the opposite, we're helping.
How? The metaphysical explanation is found in these words of Mary Baker Eddy: "Everything is as real as you make it, and no more so. What you see, hear, feel, is a mode of consciousness, and can have no other reality than the sense you entertain of it."Unity of Good, p. 8. We can ask ourselves these crucial questions: What is the quality of our own thoughts? What are we entertaining there? How might we think better thoughts and so help more?
Violence challenges us to look at what's going on in our own mental world.
