As I sat in the driver’s seat of my rental car with shards of broken glass surrounding me from a break-in resulting in the theft of my laptop, I attempted to sort out why and how this had happened. Six other cars had also been vandalized that night in the same well-lit parking lot. A police officer on the scene admitted watching it on his cruiser’s webcam and apologized for the fact that the police were not equipped to deal with the crime wave gripping his city. This incident occurred just a day after I had witnessed a fellow airline passenger verbally assaulting a flight attendant, about which I’d been asked to testify.

While these experiences may be mild compared with violence others have suffered, I felt they were a call to me as a Christian and a metaphysician to learn how to more effectively address and heal these alarming violent trends through prayer. Given the increase in certain types of criminal activity, to be passive or uncaring was not an option. 

In the Christian Science textbook, Mary Baker Eddy speaks of an ongoing fermentation in human thought and makes a stirring call to action: “. . . wicked minds will endeavor to find means by which to accomplish more evil; but those who discern Christian Science will hold crime in check” (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, pp. 96–97).