In college I took a course on nonviolence as taught and practiced by Martin Luther King, Jr. It included an exploration of Dr. King’s work during the civil rights movement in the United States in the 1960s. I then taught a class on this philosophy to high school students. Later on, I went to India to study the nonviolent philosophy, as lived by Mahatma Gandhi, and learned about its enormous effects on freedom in India. Loving everyone in thought and deed was what I absorbed from this study.
When I began studying Christian Science, I took things even further. I continued with the ideas of love and nonviolence, and was beginning to understand the deep spiritual, metaphysical fact that God, Spirit, divine Love, made us in His image. As spiritual ideas of our creator, we have a natural understanding that we do not include hate, abuse, violence, or any evil.
I thought about a nonviolence march I’d participated in with fellow college students when we sang, “We shall overcome. . . .” I realized that, in fact, in God’s kingdom there is actually no hatred to overcome. Hatred and abuse are not things we have to learn to live with, since they have no basis in God. Praying and working for justice are important, and yet, as God’s children, we each already are and always have been the expression and image of divine Love, experiencing and sharing only love. As we diligently pray in this way, we’ll see signs of hatred and division diminishing.
