Growing up I would always jump while watching scary movies. And afterward, I would get scared of monsters and dark places and would go to my parents for comfort. They would reassure me that none of that stuff was real and would remind me of passages or ideas in the Bible or the Christian Science textbook, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy. Sometimes even a stanza from the Christian Science Hymnal would help
calm me.

Through the years, these spiritual truths helped me see why I should not be afraid of things—not just things that I can see, but things that try to attack my thoughts and imagination. 

During my high school and early college years, horror/fantasy creatures—especially zombies and vampires—became very popular topics in books, movies, and TV shows. I seemed unnaturally affected by zombie movies in particular. 

So I talked with my parents about how I could pray about this, and would even jokingly figure out with my friends how to escape a “zombie apocalypse,” but these fictional creatures continued to frighten me. I finally decided I wanted to figure out why these fantasy creatures scared me so much. 

I had recently taken Christian Science class instruction and had learned how to pray about problems that arise in my thought or situations around me. I realized I could not really be afraid of a physical zombie because they did not exist, so I realized there had to be an aspect of mortal mind, or error, that was the aggressor here. I started thinking about what zombies represented: a body that is mindless and uncontrolled by reason, but controlled by hunger and rage (these are the zombies I have most often seen portrayed). Realizing this, I came to understand that it was the suggestion of the complete absence of God, divine Mind, that disturbed me. No aspect of these mindless beings were controlled by God. 

About six years ago, when I was 18, something unexpected happened to me. And I didn’t make the connection between my continued fear of horror creatures and this event until recently.  

I encountered a man who sexually assaulted and raped me while giving me a ride home in his vehicle. During this experience I steadily prayed the Lord’s Prayer aloud and within my thoughts (see Matthew 6:9–13). I worked very hard to keep mentally declaring that this man’s actions were not an expression of God or of man as His creation. I prayed to see that I should not see this behavior as who he was; that even though something was happening to my body, I did not have to suffer or be harmed by this man in any way, mentally or physically. 

The man then dropped me off at a Walmart in a neighboring city and gave me a dollar bill so I could call my dad. I felt calm and continually prayed to know that I could have no side effects after what had happened to me. Throughout the next steps of reporting the incident to the law, I needed to stand firm in my understanding of who I knew man to be: not governed by matter, physiology, psychology, or made up of material drives and a thirst for power, domination, and lust, but governed by Principle and by Truth and Love, divine Mind. As a testimony to standing firm in my understanding of this, the detective on the case commented how calm I was during my interview, and that I was not hysterical.

When it came to praying about my fear, it became clear to me that whether it was a fictional zombie, or a man motivated by power and domination, I needed to realize that I could not be afraid that an idea, man, could be out of God’s control, or not controlled through divine qualities like goodness and intelligence. If God is All and created only good, then there could not be a creature or a man that could reflect anything but good and Truth. The concept of a zombie is only a suggestion that God isn’t on the scene; that an idea, such as man, could lose God through sickness and death, and that there could be a power that could counteract God’s power of creation, of declaration and expression. I needed to mentally confront this and declare its nothingness. 

Jesus said to a temptation, “Get thee behind me, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve” (Luke 4:8). I did not want to serve, or work for, this suggestion of the absence of Mind. I needed to put this thought, this temptation of something outside of God, behind me, to dismiss it and to stop considering it as my own thought. 

I needed to realize that I could not be afraid that an idea, man, could be out
of God’s control.

It was not enough to stop watching zombie movies, or talking about them, I needed to refuse to accept or recognize the error that man, as a whole, could be governed by anything but God. I needed to affirm and to “Hold thought steadfastly to the enduring, the good, and the true, and you will bring these into your experience proportionably to their occupancy of your thoughts” (Science and Health, p. 261). With these ideas, I was able to actively work and pray with an “arsenal” of my own to see man as divinely guided by Principle. 

Many times after the rape, the suggestions came to me that I had been emotionally scarred and would always be affected by what had happened, and that it was natural to react in such a way. Immediately, I said “no” to these thoughts. I knew it was just not natural for me to fear man. If man’s true nature is God’s reflection, then his being is good and pure and the actions done to me just came from the suggestion that this spiritual idea of man could somehow lack God’s guidance, could be mindless, and that I could be harmed by this man, or that he could take pleasure in forcing me to express something separate from God.

Jesus came to show us that our true government and guidance is from God and only God. By practicing this in my own experience, as well as how I see man as God’s expression, my fear of these fictional monsters and my scarred memory of the experience with that man disappeared. 

I learned that we never, ever, need to give in to the temptation, or serve the idea, that anybody could be outside of Mind’s influence.