Editorial June 22, 1987 Issue

The protest that heals

Carolyn B. Swan

Many people have been in the position of having to object to unfair treatment from others. Yet unbridled reaction to an injustice has been known to set off violence between individuals and warfare among nations. A better choice is to take the positive action of prayer. Prayer can turn an occasion for protest into an opportunity for winning a higher peace within ourselves, and with others.

The devout prayer that is Christian Science treatment silences anger and guides our remedial actions wisely, enabling us to accomplish more than momentary redress, important as that may be. Prayerful treatment reverses the evidence of wrongdoing and unfairness, replacing it with the spiritual understanding that God is ever-present good and that He endows His man with a pure goodness that excludes cruelty, inequity, and retaliation. Putting our prayerful protests into practice through forgiveness and love opens the way for healing of misunderstanding and so restores the harmony that is rightly ours always, as God's man created in His likeness.

Responding to injustice with Christian Science treatment directs our protest to the highest possible authority. It is sublimely logical that we should appeal first to God for restitution of justice and peace. These qualities belong to Him, and to us because in our true nature as His man we reflect Him. Since no one but God can give us our true being, no one can take from us our right and ability to realize it, including the justice and peace that inhere in it.

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The protest that heals

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