Article May 26, 1980 Issue

Passing through—unharmed

Mary Carol Garcia

"But he passing through the midst of them went his way."^{Luke 4:30;} This Bible verse tells how Jesus walked through a violent mob bent on pushing him off a cliff. Even in the midst of antagonism, Jesus acted with the love and calm of the Christ, his eternal spiritual selfhood. Jesus was inseparable from the character of the Christ. This is what enabled him to go his way.

I was once in a situation that I felt was similar to the one described in Luke. For several years during the last week of classes, water balloon fights had broken out regularly on the lawn of my school. Although simply water battles at first, they always turned into bloody fights and bitter racial conflict, with a gang from another school joining in.

While staying late one afternoon to clean out my locker, I was suddenly reminded of these fights by some noise outside. Up until then I hadn't done much praying about them. I had always been friends with kids of other races. Besides, I wasn't involved with the fighting. So I decided to ignore the problem and just leave school right away. But no problem has ever been solved by ignoring it. Mrs. Eddy writes in Science and Health: "The finger-posts of divine Science show the way our Master trod, and require of Christians the proof which he gave, instead of mere profession. We may hide spiritual ignorance from the world, but we can never succeed in the Science and demonstration of spiritual good through ignorance or hypocrisy."^{Science and Health, pp. 242–243.}