I am so grateful for the timely publications of The Mother Church that meet our specific needs. To me, they are proof that God’s love is communicated in ways that are understandable to each of us.
One Friday morning, I heard that a member of my extended family had disappeared while doing research in a country where proxy wars are being waged. The situation there is violent and changing rapidly, and the family was extremely worried, reaching out to as many people as possible, asking for help.
I turned to the Christian Science Bible Lesson for that week, titled “Man.” I prayed with the Golden Text, which was the verse from Genesis establishing man’s identity as God’s creation: “And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness” (Genesis 1:26). I prayed to see that this must apply everywhere, including to everyone in that country. If this family member had been kidnapped (which was the fear), that would not change the spiritual fact that he, as well as his captors, was created in God’s image and likeness, and that God’s love for every one of His children was being felt and known by each individual involved.
No one knew where the family member was, but Christ was with him, speaking to him, and he could not be separated from this divine communication.
This passage from the Christian Science textbook by Mary Baker Eddy was also in the Lesson that week: “Christ is the true idea voicing good, the divine message from God to men speaking to the human consciousness” (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 332). It reassured me that Christ is the divine messenger and was communicating to everyone involved in this situation.
The fear was that no one knew where the family member was, how to find him, or if he was safe. But Christ was with him, speaking to him, and he could not be separated from this divine fact or communication. I prayed specifically to address a parent’s fear for their child. The Responsive Reading in the Lesson stated, “Thou shalt have none other gods before me” (Deuteronomy 5:7). This is the first of the Ten Commandments; and since fear denies the omnipresence and omnipotence of God, it breaks that commandment.
The Bible Lesson made it clear that man (everyone’s real nature) exists as God’s reflection and therefore is incapable of doing or being anything that is not Godlike. There is safety, peace, health, and love for every one of us in that spiritual fact.
I was also grateful for the Christian Science Daily Lift that morning. The podcast was responding to news about sectarian violence. The speaker prayed to see that in reality there aren’t some places that are more subject to warfare, but that we are all of the household of God. She concluded that we cannot afford to be resigned to alarming news in any form; rather, we need to see that all is under the “peacekeeping sovereignty of divine Love” (Kate Mullane Robertson, Daily Lift, March 3, 2023). It was the perfect message to forward to relatives who were not students of Christian Science.
Later that day, we received news that the family member had been found. He had indeed been kidnapped. But he was soon released, moved to a safe location, and flew home two days later, unscathed by the whole experience.
While enormously grateful for this news, I was still struggling with the concept of evil. I knew that evil must be powerless in the presence of omnipotent God, who is all good, but I wasn’t sure if I truly understood what that meant. It certainly felt as though evil had been present in the experience of that country and of my relative. I wondered how I could address evil more deeply in my own thinking and see that it really is a false belief.
Evil must be powerless in the presence of omnipotent God, who is
all good.
The answer came at the Sunday service of The Mother Church when I was reading the By-Law “A Rule for Motives and Acts” from the Church Manual. The last sentence reads, “The members of this Church should daily watch and pray to be delivered from all evil, from prophesying, judging, condemning, counseling, influencing or being influenced erroneously” (p. 40).
I realized that to be “delivered from all evil,” I needed to watch my thought continually. I could not wonder if there could be negative aftereffects within the family from this experience, as that would be prophesying erroneously. I could not judge the individual for seemingly placing himself in harm’s way, as that would be judging erroneously. I could not condemn a country for being a hotbed of religious fundamentalism, as that would mean being influenced erroneously by believing there is a place that is outside God’s government. I began to see that this is how to realize, as stated in the same By-Law, that “in Science, divine Love alone governs man. . . .”
This deeper understanding of being delivered from all evil is still a work in progress for me, but I am so grateful for the practical tools Christian Science provides to help us see that man truly is the image and likeness of God, and beloved of God.
