Editorial November 15, 1975 Issue

Scientific Self-defense

Geoffrey J. Barratt

It is quite usual for prudent people to aim to defend themselves against potential dangers and troubles. We like to feel we'll be defended against unexpected financial demands, accident, and so on. But how to achieve this goal? We achieve self-defense in a spiritually scientific way as we discover what our self really is and act accordingly.

Thinking of ourselves as mortal personalities, encased in a more or less frail physical form, is a mistake. Defending this false self can seem difficult, uncertain, random. Even though we take standard precautions against possible mishaps, unexpected demands, crime, our highest and fully reliable self-defense comes in identifying ourselves as the indestructible expression of indestructible Spirit, infinite Deity. Spirit is immortal, and All. Spirit, because of its infinite nature, is "defended" against destruction because it includes no place or space in which a threat to its infinity could exist and surface. Man, the entire expression of Spirit, is defended against danger because he is always accompanied by and inseparable from Spirit. "Existence, separate from divinity, Science explains as impossible,"^{Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 522;} Mary Baker Eddy writes.

Strictly speaking, of course, the notion of God and man being defended against danger is nonsensical, and this becomes evident when one understands the nature of Spirit's creation as omnipresent, utterly concordant, immutably perfect. Christ Jesus' resurrection from death itself is a prime demonstration of this, and through our maturing spirituality we can begin that demonstration for ourselves.

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