PERSPECTIVE ON THE NEWS March 3, 1980 Issue

Putting down the upsurge in brutality

A massacre of over one thousand villagers by Afghan troops acting under Soviet orders is reported to have occurred last April. This tragedy didn't surface in the news until correspondents for The Christian Science Monitor, Newsweek, and two North European papers reconstructed the incident through interviews with survivors now huddled in Pakistani refugee camps.

It would be horrifying enough if this atrocity were only an isolated phenomenon. But in many areas of the world there appears to be an upsurge of brutality. Over thirty prisoners died recently in a prison riot in New Mexico, many of them hunted down by fellow inmates and "executed." The riot was said to have been partially brought on by bad prison conditions. Also, a report has just been released by Amnesty International, citing the widespread use of illegal detainment and torture in Argentina and other countries.

Instead of being stunned or enraged at events of this nature, we owe it to mankind to go a large step further. Mrs. Eddy writes in Science and Health, "Good never causes evil, nor creates aught that can cause evil."^{Science and Health, p. 93;} The Christian metaphysician's role is to gain and hold the mental vantage point from which the unreal nature of evil becomes apparent. We need to bear witness in our thought and living to what is eternally factual—that there are not two kinds of consciousness, the depraved and the divine, but one, the divine. Only when we're truly awake can we recognize the unreality of a nightmare. It's incumbent on us to progress beyond moral outrage to a conviction based on spiritual understanding of the indestructible and permanent well-being of God's creation—totally immune from the irruptions of evil—and to affirm everyone's inclusion in that kingdom.