I've been seeing reports on the activity of civic-minded people working to reclaim neighborhoods, to wipe out the use of illegal drugs, to curb violence and other serious problems. During a report on a troubled neighborhood, my heart went out to the people there. How could I help?

To get some ideas, I turned to Christ Jesus' Sermon on the Mount, in the Bible. In it, Jesus gave specific instructions on how to deal with adversaries. He didn't say that we should condemn those who despitefully use us, but that we should pray for them (see Matt. 5:44). But how could I pray for a drug dealer?

That word condemn stood out. Suddenly I thought, "Who gave me the right to judge, to deny another the right to be redeemed, or to condemn anyone as hopeless?" To condemn is to become part of the problem, for it magnifies the problem instead of pointing toward the solution. And the Scriptures state, "Let the Lord be magnified" (Ps. 35:27). To me, this means to let God's nature be magnified, not the faults of others.

Drug dealing itself is evil, and should be condemned. But what about the person involved in it? Even if the individual doesn't realize it, he or she is the child of God. Evildoing is not natural to any of us, but there is certainly a need for diligent prayer that affirms what is true, namely the goodness of God and the spiritual nature of man. In prayer, then, the task is to separate that which is unspiritual from having any relation to the individual. The true identity of each of us is the likeness of Spirit, God. There is in all of us an inherent goodness—the seed of Truth, which, though perhaps appearing to be tiny, can be nurtured into full bloom. To look beyond what appears to be and affirm what really is—to see what God sees and loves—is to put prayer on a sound basis.

In her book The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, Mary Baker Eddy explains: "You may condemn evil in the abstract without harming any one or your own moral sense, but condemn persons seldom, if ever. Improve every opportunity to correct sin through your own perfectness" (p. 249).

To be part of the solution—to correct sin—is to spiritualize our own thinking, speaking, and acting, and to show by the best example possible what "perfectness" is. We leave it to God to make the way of others perfect.

Freeing ourselves from sin requires us to recognize that man can never be cut off from God, Love. Science and Health explains, "To grasp the reality and order of being in its Science, you must begin by reckoning God as the divine Principle of all that really is" (p. 275). When we reason on this basis, it becomes evident that evil has no foundation. There aren't certain groups or places where evil has special influence. Rather, each of us includes a heritage of good alone. The Scriptures make it clear that this inheritance comes to us as spiritual qualities. St. Paul calls them "the fruit of the Spirit," and he lists "love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance." He goes on to say that "against such there is no law" (Gal. 5:22, 23).

To understand that the true identity of each individual is composed of spiritual qualities is to pray aright. By that I mean rejecting any false belief about God and man that would deceive and pull us down from this ideal, and affirming that these qualities belong to all of God's children. Holding to the right idea of man brings about solutions.

There really is none other than God, good, so there is no power to make one sinful, sensual, violent, or drug dependent. We can safely trust in God's ability and power to enforce His will for all of us and to maintain His law of goodness here, now, and in the future.