Article September 4, 1995 Issue

Our work for peace—everywhere

Sharon Moore Price

As the United Nations and individual governments attempt to find solutions to the war in Bosnia, those of us outside this troubled part of the world have a role to play. There is a peace to keep and healing to be achieved. This is our work—yours and mine—and our prayers will support all those dedicated workers who are bravely and tirelessly striving for peace. No magic formula exists for this prayer, but there are three spiritual demands we can make on ourselves: the first is to love selflessly and unconditionally; the second is to identify the ignorant and false beliefs that lie beneath the surface of the conflict; and the third is to continue in the spiritual warfare that will eradicate these beliefs and bring healing solutions to light.

In her book Science and Health, Mary Baker Eddy tells us: "Love for God and man is the true incentive in both healing and teaching. Love inspires, illumines, designates, and leads the way" (p. 454). Can we faithfully love others who are beyond our personal family concerns and sphere of thought? Can we feel a compelling compassion for the suffering of others? We must! This is the kind of love that inspires healing thoughts and ideas that are waiting to be discerned. This is the love that allows one to see as Jesus saw and to heal in the way that Jesus healed. It is the unconditional love of the Christ through which we can see "a new heaven and a new earth," as St. John saw in his revelation (Rev. 21:1).

Students of Christian Science and all others who follow Christ Jesus have a vitally important, unselfish responsibility to concern themselves with the welfare of humanity. We cannot afford to rest in the peace and affluence of personal comfort or self-satisfied spiritual study. In his book Twelve Years with Mary Baker Eddy, Irving C. Tomlinson recalls Mrs. Eddy's conviction that wrongdoing must be actively resisted. He reports that she said at one point, "I would rather at any time dwell on love alone and get away from error, but that would not do; it would allow error to increase" (p. 76). Those who would rid the world of evil have an obligation to resist anything that would claim to increase evil's influence, and we do this by vigorously applying the laws of God that Christ Jesus presented so bravely and well. Specific spiritual action can be taken in order to address mankind's problems through the Science of the Christ, the truth that will fully destroy error. With our own hearts cleansed and bathed in the light of God, divine Love, we can discern in others the spiritual nature of man as created by God, good.

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