Only one enemy?

Yes, only one enemy. While it looks very much like a bully at school or work, the estranged spouse, the impatient driver who just cut you off, the neighbor whose late-night music or foul language disrupts the harmony of your home, or, on the larger scale, one nation taking up arms against another or using some of its most powerful weapons to control its own people, still, the bottom line is that there is only one enemy—the carnal mind.

The Bible tells us that this “carnal mind is enmity against God” (Romans 8:7 ). Against God? Yes. The enemy is always in opposition to God, to good, since the source of all good is God. It looks like the enemy is against us. And that is true, too, in the sense that we are the very reflection, or image, of God.

The bottom line is that there is only one enemy—the carnal mind.

Jesus, whose earthly life exemplified the clearest sense of the Christly nature of the man of God’s creating, called this enemy the devil. You can read how he wrestled with this mental aggressor in Matthew 4:1–11 , where three times he conquered the persistent suggestions that he prove he was the Son of God by actions, that this carnal mind outlined would portray him as a superhuman being. At another time in Jesus’ ministry, he boldly called this mental aggressor “a liar, and the father of it” (John 8:44 ).

Harsh words, violence of any kind, revenge, cannot win the battle against this enemy, but a spiritually based approach can. This enemy ultimately must be conquered through Truth, the all-powerful divine Mind, the only real Mind, that recognizes no other mind and is totally unaffected by the suggestion of another mind.

Look again at Jesus’ example. An angry mob, about to throw him over a hill, could not carry out their violence because Jesus apparently had risen so high in his understanding that God’s creation included no enemy, that he simply walked through the crowd unharmed, freeing both himself and them from ungodlike action (see Luke 4:28–30 ).

Then, on the cross, wrongfully accused and violently punished—in spite of the apparent pain this inflicted on his human selfhood—he went even higher in his understanding of the allness of good alone when he forgave the people who perpetrated the suggestions of the carnal mind, saying, “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34 ). No revenge there, no self-pity, no violent reaction. Just pure love and pure understanding that the only power on earth truly is God. That sacred forgiveness ultimately led to Jesus’ resurrection from death and his final ascension above all the carnal suggestions of a material existence.

We all have the same opportunity as Jesus to have the Mind of Christ and not indulge the suggestions of a carnal mind; to so rise in our understanding and demonstration of our natural Christlike nature that the enemy against God increasingly diminishes in our experience—and the world—until it completely disappears.