Arming that disarms

People are desperate to avert a nuclear catastrophe, yet many are numbed with fear, unaware that God is omnipotent. The Bible makes divine power practical for us. The prophecy of Isaiah awaits fulfillment: "They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more." Isa. 2:4. The practicality of this prophecy and the certainty of its ultimate fulfillment rest on the truths of the Sermon on the Mount, which Christ Jesus practiced and taught his followers to practice. It rests on the fact of God's real nature as good, without a single element of evil, of man's real nature as the spiritual reflection of God, and of our God-derived right to prove that man's perfect individuality is our only true individuality.

God's man is indivisible, indestructible, and not destructive. But if we would hasten fulfillment of Isaiah's prophecy in human living, we need to wake up from the whole erring, dreamlike concept of man separated from God and divided into conflicting mortals. The remedy for the dream includes spiritually defending ourselves against the temptations that would confuse the dream with the reality of man's inseparability from God. We can turn to the Christ, the true idea of manhood, for a higher understanding of our own nature. We can establish the daily discipline of living in accord with Christian precepts. In this way we can demonstrate control over and reduction of the belief that material warfare and its superweapons are a fixed necessity and must continue to be a growing threat to existence. In the context of an all-out effort to wake to the truth of being, we do need to war with evil. This warfare, however, is not physical but mental, and the weapons are spiritual.

In Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, Mary Baker Eddy, writes: "Judas had the world's weapons. Jesus had not one of them, and chose not the world's means of defence. 'He opened not his mouth.' The great demonstrator of Truth and Love was silent before envy and hate." Science and Health, p. 48.

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Editorial
Refining even the gold in our character
April 23, 1984
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