In a popular online game, players are characters in a space station, and one or two are randomly chosen by the game as “impostors.” The rest of the players have to race to complete tasks while determining who the impostors are, so that they can eject them before the impostors, who go about sabotaging their efforts, can eliminate them all one by one.
To me, this game illustrates a key point that Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, brings out in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures: that we must “stand porter at the door of thought. Admitting only such conclusions as you wish realized in bodily results, you will control yourself harmoniously” (p. 392).
Lately I have been thinking more about standing porter to recognize the impostors trying to enter my thinking and eject them before they can influence me. On a broader scale, when I hear accounts of conspiracy theories being widely believed and notions that don’t have any factual basis, it can seem that there is no filter or “porter” to reject these suggestions. So what can we do to keep ourselves from being manipulated by false influences, especially when it can seem difficult to determine which messages are true and which are false?
