Do you sometimes get the helpless feeling that you're an innocent victim?

I know a high school senior who felt that he had been unjustly victimized when his motorcycle was stolen.

Barry had a complicated daily itinerary that included classes at both a local college and his high school, so he put his life savings into this motorcycle as the only efficient means of transportation. He was very proud of his cycle. On weekends he spent hours polishing it and adjusting minor troubles, and he always left it carefully locked in the campus parking lots. Nevertheless, one day he came out of class and found that it was gone.

When he phoned his parents, almost his first remark was, "Why did this have to happen to me? I never did anything to whoever stole my cycle!"

Barry and his family were Christian Scientists, and this seemed a good opportunity for them to apply the healing, restorative truths of their religion. They notified the police and their insurance agent, but their principal approach was through their understanding of Christian Science.

What were some of the false suggestions they needed to handle through prayer?

Well, Barry felt he was a victim of someone else's thievery. As victims we feel cut off from something good. We seem to be separated from God, to have gotten outside the harmonious atmosphere of Love.

But can man, made in the image and likeness of God—and that's who each of us actually is—really be separated from Love? Is there any material condition that can cut off God's continual expression of good to His blessed ideas?

There's an emphatic answer in Romans. After Paul began his mission of spreading Christianity, he was faced with desertion by his companions and with stoning, arrest, beatings, imprisonment, betrayal, shipwreck, and snakebite. Nevertheless, he wrote with confidence: "Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? . . . Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us." ^{Rom. 8: 35-3 7;}

Barry and his family reasoned that God does not send disasters. Therefore disasters have no reality or power. No matter how loudly material sense screams that we are helpless victims, we cannot be cut off from good. We can conquer any inharmonious condition, and we don't have to suffer because of someone else's wrongdoing.

Barry also felt very resentful—almost vindictive—toward the unknown thief. This was perhaps the hardest thing for him to overcome, for the injustice seemed very real and personal. But, after a discussion, he could see that you don't defeat evil with more evil but "overcome evil with good." ^12:21; It was a struggle, but he knew that he had to stop believing in two kinds of people—some good and some bad. He had to know that there is only the upright man of God's creating. And he had to love that man.

The sense of loss also seemed very real and crucial. "How am I going to get to my classes tomorrow?" he wanted to know.

Turning to Science and Health by Mrs. Eddy, his mother read, "It is impossible that man should lose aught that is real, when God is all and eternally his." ^{Science and Health, p. 302;} Well, obviously Barry had lost his motorcycle. So they went over the sentence more carefully. They saw that it began, "It is impossible that man should lose aught that is real." So they considered the nature of reality. Matter is not real. Reality is spiritual. Man cannot lose spiritual ideas. The motorcycle was a material representative for the spiritual ideas of usefulness, mobility, activity.

Barry was familiar with this part of the definition of God in the Glossary of Science and Health: "The great I am; the all-knowing, all-seeing, all-acting, all-wise, all-loving, and eternal." ^{p. 587;} He knew that because God is the source of all true activity, he, as God's likeness, could not be separated from right activity. And so it proved. Before school the next day, an alternate, adequate means of transportation turned up.

Working further with this definition of God, he prayerfully considered the problem of finding the missing cycle. Barry discussed his predicament with his Christian Science Sunday School class. One member remarked, "Well, you can be grateful that you have insurance to reimburse you for the loss." Okay, he was grateful for his insurance. But he knew he could first of all be grateful for the spiritual truths he was becoming aware of through Christian Science. Christ Jesus gave thanks for God's infinite spiritual goodness before he produced the material food to feed four thousand hungry people and before Lazarus walked bodily out of his grave. To Jesus, his oneness with Love was an ever-present reality.

It's easy enough to be grateful after everything has been solved humanly. It requires a higher faith to express gratitude for the spiritual ideas you know are present but have not yet been translated into human supply.

And finally Barry worked to demonstrate completeness. Ecclesiastes records, "I know that, whatsoever God doeth, it shall be for ever: nothing can be put to it, nor any thing taken from it." ^{Eccl. 3: 14.} Because God is complete, is All-in-all, man by reflection can lack no needed thing.

Several weeks later, through very unusual circumstances, the motorcycle was recovered in a city one hundred and fifty miles away. The police and the insurance company first learned about the recovery from Barry and his family. It was clearly a proof of divine Love's overcoming every evil suggestion through spiritual, not human, means. Barry was impressed by the fact that an individual can prove he is a victor over evil, not a victim of it.