Editorial September 17, 1979 Issue

The best defense

GEOFFREY J. BARRATT

We hear much about defense—against disease, political enemies, inflation, and so on. The most effectual posture we can take in any circumstance is a spiritual one.

God, Spirit, by His very character of omnipotence and omnipresence, is perfectly self-defending—meaning that God's universality is eternally established and so any occasion for defense does not arise for God. Man (and what a radical concept this is to human thought) is not a little, threatened temporal entity, but the actual reflection of God. Man cannot be faced by anything that God is not faced by. Knowing this is our best defense against discord, failure, illness, accident. To enjoy a more secure life, we must identify ourselves as Love's reflection and, piece by piece, lay aside the mortal sense of ourselves. The need is to place our sense of ourselves, our home, our substance, our church and environment, in Spirit, not in matter.

Carelessness in doing this is spiritually indefensible for the Christian Scientist. Is there a paradox here? Must we defend ourselves against unrealities? Doesn't Science tell us evil is unreal?

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