Article December 2, 1944 Issue

Individual Censorship

W. STUART BOOTH

When wartime conditions make it advisable to censor newspaper reports and many other communications, men endeavor to so word their messages that they will pass the censors without suffering any deletion or change. Certain members of the United States Army, Navy, and other forces are privileged to censor their own letters, and when these are properly marked by the writers they pass in the mails without inspection by others. Of course these individuals doubtless are as careful in the wording of their communications as if they were subject to close scrutiny by the regular censors.

Such censorship rules are not new and strange to us as Christian Scientists, for among our first lessons in applying the Science of Christianity we are taught to watch our thinking that nothing unworthy gain admittance to our mental homes. In all her writings the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, Mary Baker Eddy, makes plain the fact that God, good, is divine Mind, the source of all true, desirable, and influential thoughts, and the further fact that any thought of evil, discord, imperfection, animality, injustice, or fear, not being from God, Truth, is to be classified as error, and then rejected. Paul, in his epistle to the Ephesians, gave a sound rule for censorship of thought and speech in these words: "Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth, but that which is good to the use of edifying, that it may minister grace unto the hearers."

The purpose of censoring communications between individuals in wartime is to preclude the giving of information which might be of advantage to the enemy and of disadvantage to ourselves. Like-wise, the censoring of our thoughts is for the purpose of self-protection. It is evident that when we refuse to accept as our own thinking, and thus decline to put into action, such satanic suggestions as fear, envy, impatience, resentment, self-justification, and deceit we are defeating the adversary, and we are promoting our own peace and prosperity while truly defending our God-given health and harmony.

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