Perhaps the most agonizing thing about captivity is not knowing when it will end. In ancient times the Israelites endured several long periods of captivity. One imagines quiet conversations between friends hoping and speculating about how freedom might finally come. They must have helped one another overcome discouragement when tempted to fear that their religious teachings could fade out.

Modern captivities have startling parallels with Biblical ones. In recent months we've watched former political prisoners and exiles rise to positions of leadership as ruthless governments have toppled.

Some have attributed these remarkable developments to an unshackling of people's thought, a dramatic shift in human consciousness. The impulsion toward democracy and the dismantling of repressive forms of government have been so unprecedented that a global revolution in human consciousness might not be too strong a description for the phenomenon.

Perhaps mankind is on the verge of realizing that captivity and freedom are essentially mental—the direct result of what human beings are believing and thinking. We may be learning that our "captivities," or "cages," are actually self-created boundaries of thought. Racism, totalitarianism, materialism in all its phases, constitute prisons of the mind. Hate, greed, and egotism form invisible but nonetheless insufferable straitjackets in which human progress and creativity are mercilessly restrained.

Yet breathtaking shifts toward freedom in so many parts of the world show that even "straitjacket mentality" isn't incurable—and therefore change can come. Given that the repressive governments wielded the physical power to control, how could the Berlin Wall come down? How could millions suddenly speak freely and live without recriminations and fear of reprisal?

While the wall looked like solid matter, the iron curtain it symbolized was primarily a mental barrier. Physical and political power can't control consciousness and conscience when individuals refuse to surrender the truth they know is true.

One's conviction in the irrepressibility of Truth is all the mightier when that conviction is based on an understanding that God is Truth. "All [God's] ways are judgment: a God of truth and without iniquity, just and right is he," Moses taught the people (see Deuteronomy).

Christian Science teaches that God, divine Truth, is invariable and absolute and can't be perverted or subverted. Although the words of truth may seem to be unjustly appropriated or rewritten to suit the agenda of a particular regime or tyrant, a lie is always temporary, and always doomed. Wicked, erroneous methods that appear to be succeeding in the short run always fail in the long run.

It is during the seeming success of the error that faithful, consistent prayer must do its best work. Prayer supports mankind's ability to think true, clear thoughts and to maintain the consciousness of man's spiritual identity as God's likeness. Christian Science strengthens the ability to hold fast to the fact that God is the only real governor of His idea, man. It helps us break out of the mental cage of believing that we are under some control other than God's some influence other than Truth's

The effect of prayer is to change human consciousness, to lead it to accept more fully the changeless Truth of all being. God's spiritual law of progress impels progress—even when it seems impossible. Error has no power or authority to prevent its own upsetting.

Step by step a better sense of government will come as human consciousness responds to the authority of divine Truth. What is legitimately needed in human leadership will come to the fore, and what is wrong will fade. In the Bible, God promises, "I will overturn, overturn, overturn, it: and it shall be no more, until he come whose right it is; and I will give it him."

Trying to imagine a scenario for the overturning is in itself a limitation. The human mind tends to focus on rearranging the personalities involved, as if life were some kind of chess game. The most significant overturning is in human consciousness. As thought stops pushing its own game plan and develops a trust in Truth that is stronger than its faith in mortals, new paths open up. Spiritual rightness doesn't emerge through maneuvering or manipulation. And it can't be intimidated.

When Christ Jesus stepped upon history's stage, the beleaguered Jewish people were living under the repression and humiliation of Roman occupation. Some hoped for the appearing of a Messiah in the form of a brilliant political and military strategist who would rally the faithful and outwit the oppressor, turning Israel in a new direction.

Christ Jesus didn't fit that expectation. Yet he did initiate an unequaled impetus for mankind's spiritual progress. The influence of Christ, Truth, involves a change in heart, in consciousness. The Master's followers needed to learn (and still need to learn) that in order for the world around them to change, they must first mature in their grasp of man's spiritual identity as the expression of Truth. Gradually, through experience, they must learn that faith in matter, material means, or material personalities always results in a captivity of one form or another. And Truth is always the only way out.

"Grace and Truth are potent beyond all other means and methods," writes the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, Mary Baker Eddy, in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures. Mankind may seem to have a long way to go in seeing Truth's omnipotence universally. But it's only fair to acknowledge that we've been making progress in our journey. Human consciousness is throwing off the mental shackles of injustice and limitation. And as our consciousness of divine Truth's universality becomes even clearer, stubborn captivities, in our individual lives and in our world, will be broken and we will be released. This is always how freedom will come about.

Elaine Natale

Stand fast therefore in the liberty
wherewith Christ hath made us free,
and be not entangled again
with the yoke of bondage....
For, brethren,
ye have been called unto liberty....

Galatians 5:1, 13