Praying together about Middle East conflict
Michael Pabst
As the Middle East conflict escalates and world leaders strive to find a political resolution, many people are wondering how to pray for a peaceful outcome.
In this Q&A chat, Michael Pabst, a practitioner of Christian Science who has also worked on the radio and print editions of Der Herold der Christian Science, discusses the potency of prayer and the possibility of finding peace by trusting in God’s guidance.
Michael shares practical examples from his own life and Christian Science practice to explain how to pray for divine unity. He explains the importance of setting aside human emotions and seeing all parties involved in the conflict as one with God.
spirituality.com host: Hello, everyone! Welcome to another spirituality.com live question and answer audio event. Today we’re going to talk about praying together about Middle East conflict. Our guest is Michael Pabst, who is a native of Germany, although he presently lives in Pownal, Maine, here in the United States.
Michael has worked on the radio and print editions of Der Herold der Christian Science, which in English is The Herald of Christian Science. The Herald appears in several different languages, and it’s one of the periodicals established by Mary Baker Eddy, who discovered Christian Science.
Michael has been in the full-time practice of Christian Science healing for several years, and I know from working with him on various projects related to the Herald that he brings a healing approach to the things he does. That makes me especially grateful that he is able to join us as we are thinking and praying about conditions in Israel and Lebanon and the surrounding area. I think we’d all like a healing solution there.
Michael, do you have some comments you’d like to make in order to get us started?
Michael Pabst: I feel that we all long for a resolution in this situation, and to start us off, I would just like to say, I have seen in my life over and over again how potent prayer can be.
We just want to be so clear that this next hour here is not something to comfort ourselves or to wish and hope, but that we really see this as a very tangible contribution to a practical solution in this situation. I’ve seen that prayer not only can change thought, but lives. It can change circumstances. And I’m sure that you and I and everyone else on the chat today expect that from this conversation we’re going to have.
spirituality.com host: I certainly hope so, Michael. And we do have a whole raft of questions. The first is from Atlanta, and I’m going to assume Georgia: “How do we deal with family members who might feel strongly that one side or the other is more right than another?”
Michael: That might happen in many families, that certain people feel the political side from that perspective is right, and the other one from the other side. But I feel really we need to go deeper than that, and we can all find a common ground by looking beneath just a merely political evaluation of the situation.
You know, I grew up in Germany during the Cold War, where there was a clash of ideologies going on. We had an exchange program—our school class did—with the people in France, and they came to visit us, and it was just so natural to grow up with these people as neighbors. When you are a teenager, you speak their language, they speak yours.
And then, over the years, we would find out that we were actually supposed to be enemies, because France and Germany had been at each other’s throats for, well, a couple thousand years. But it was possible to find peace. And maybe Europe has been enjoying its longest stretch of peace in its entire history. I’m not so sure—maybe historians would tell me differently. But at least, peace is certainly possible. And how is it possible? It’s possible by finding a common ground that goes underneath political views.
I find such great inspiration in what Paul had to say. Paul was a preacher in the New Testament, and he encountered many different cultures. Unlike Peter, who felt more comfortable talking to the Jews, Paul was someone who was drawn to preach to people who were not Jewish, not Christian. They were not even monotheists, like the Muslims.
He felt called to the Greeks, to the Romans, to people who believed in many gods, people who didn’t even know the Ten Commandments, had no common culture. And yet, he found a common ground with them. For example, in one of his letters he says, “For there is no difference between the Jew and the Greek: for the same Lord over all is rich unto all that call upon him.”
When you look at a family that might be arguing about what the right political approach, or the right military approach, would be, they have much more in common than those two cultures, the Jews and the Greeks, two thousand years ago. And even there, Paul says, “There is no difference … for the same Lord over all is rich unto all that call upon him.”
spirituality.com host: So you’re basically saying that we can trust God’s guidance—it’s not so much the human details as really trusting God’s guidance to let the right answer come forth?
Michael: Right. We have to start from that foundation. Naturally, we want to see conflicts resolved in a way that is as fair as possible, with no one losing any face—as little as possible. But it needs to have a common foundation. And I feel Paul has given us a wonderful example of how he has found a common foundation.
Mary Baker Eddy, who, as you just mentioned, founded the Christian Science periodicals—and Christian Science—wrote in her book Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures: “It should be thoroughly understood that all men have one Mind, one God and Father, one Life, Truth, and Love. Mankind will become perfect in proportion as this fact becomes apparent, war will cease and the true brotherhood of man will be established.”
spirituality.com host: That’s really good, because then if you’re turning to the one Mind, or the one God, you’re really looking for the solution that will encompass everyone, that will unite everyone in a harmonious and good way.
The next question is from Philadelphia. Chris is asking, “What prayers do you find to pray for the innocent ones—the mothers and children and seniors and care providers?” I’m assuming he is referring to people who have been killed in the bombing attacks.
Michael: That is certainly a very legitimate question, and one that I’m sure is on many people’s minds. And of course we all feel for the people who have lost their lives and also with their relatives who might be grieving for them.
I’d like to give you an example from my professional practice as a Christian Science practitioner how I have found prayer an immediate help to those that we might say suffer innocently and unnecessarily. Granted, it was not a war situation, but it was almost a war situation—a domestic war situation.
The father of a family with several children called me and he told me that one of his sons had a split upper lip that was infected and painful, and it was difficult for him to keep liquid in his mouth when he eats and drinks. And he asked me to pray for him.
Well, in the course of our conversation, I could sense that there was a lot of hostility in his family. And he also let on that he was fighting with his wife quite a bit. By the way, it was shortly before Christmas. I promised I would pray for the child, but in thinking that situation over in my prayers, I realized actually the parents were the ones who needed more prayer, that the conflict was really coming from them and emanating from them and affecting, and maybe even infecting, the children.
So I felt very strongly that I needed to pray for unity, to realize the divine unity as a present and possible fact in this family—that what I just read here that, “Mankind”—and you can say this family—“will become perfect in proportion as this fact becomes apparent.” The fact that we all have one Mind, one source. And what was so helpful for me in thinking that through from that perspective was the term the “undivided garment,” a garment “without seam or rent,” which refers to the garment that Jesus Christ supposedly wore.
So I tried to envision that wonderful garment made of one piece. And I thought, This family is really of one source. They have one common foundation. And it gave me so much joy to see the unity in this family. I felt there was a change in the atmosphere.
When the father called me again a few days later, he said to me, “You know, I realized I’m fighting with my wife too much.” I hadn’t said a thing to him about it. He had come to this realization on his own, by my focusing on their common foundation, on their common ground.
And a few days later—that was shortly before the school break was over and the kids would have to go back to school—the father said that before the break the kids in school were teasing his child because of his malformed mouth. And so he was dreading the kid having to go back to school.
And just a day before the school break was over, he looked at his son, and he did a classic double take, and he said, “What’s with your mouth?” And the child said—he was about maybe 11 or 12—“Why? What should be wrong with it?” His mouth had been completely healed.
spirituality.com host: Oh, that’s great! True in California is asking, “Without knowing all the history and all the current details, is it still possible to pray effectively for peace in the Middle East, or really anywhere in the world?”
Michael: Absolutely.
With our prayer, we respond to that mental yearning, to all the hearts crying out for answers. And we can certainly respond to that without needing to know any specific material details. The crying need here is love and forgiveness. That’s what everyone needs to be assured of, that each one is a cherished and valued expression of the one Mind, God.
It doesn’t matter if they are Jewish, if they’re Israelis, if they are Palestinians, Arabs, or if they are Lebanese, Muslims—each one is an equally valued and cherished idea, you could say, or a dear child of God. And we want to feel that; we want to be convinced of it. We want to know it, so it really changes our self-esteem, our self-understanding.
There is a deep yearning to feel respected in that area of the world—everywhere, you could say—but in this area right now, specifically. And how do we answer that thirst, that spiritual hunger? By living it. By going down the sidewalk with that love and appreciation that God has for each one of His beloved children.
I can tell you of an experience that brought this home to me in a very tangible way. That was during the civil war, you could say, the conflict in the Balkans, when Yugoslavia broke up and all of a sudden, you had the six individual provinces at each other’s throats, and the Croats and the Serbs, and so forth.
And during that time—you mentioned I worked for that magazine on spirituality, called Der Herold, The Christian Science Herald—we got together, our editorial department, and we said, “What does this region really need today, now? It needs love. It needs compassion. And it needs the assurance that life is valuable.”
So we said to each other, “Let’s do that right now, today, because we don’t live in a vacuum. We feel their thoughts, and that must necessarily mean they must feel our thoughts. No one lives on an island. We’re all connected. So what we think has a direct and immediate bearing on what other people think and feel. That’s why we can pray for each other.”
And so we made that commitment to each other—that we wanted to be even more patient with each other, more appreciative, more respectful, to really live more of the life of appreciation and respect for each other.
That evening I got home, and I felt really good about this idea of praying, of turning our lives into a prayer for that situation. But the moment I stepped through the door, I saw that there was kind of a mini civil war going on in our household.
At that time, we had four cats, and one cat was chasing the other three. Typically they all lived in perfect harmony with each other, but at that moment, somehow one cat decided to be the tyrant and pounced on the others and bit them, and was really fierce, which had never, ever happened before—or since, I should say.
And I grabbed him, and I said to him, “What’s with you? Are you out of your mind?” And he had a look in his face that I had never seen before. He looked almost insane. He had a fierce, almost a mad look in his face. He looked at me with that look, and the next second, without any warning, he bit me in my hand, so deeply that his fangs almost came out on the other side.
spirituality.com host: Wow!
Michael: And for a second, I was just stunned. I was baffled. I didn’t feel any pain, even, because I was so speechless. I put him down, and then a few second later, the pain started. I will be honest and say it hurt pretty badly, and the blood flowed—Hollywood would have had a field day.
But I had to think of the time earlier that day when I had basically made a commitment and say, “I’m going to live a life of love and respect for any living creature. And this is exactly an opportunity that needs it. Now, I want to do it twice as much. Especially now, and not become mad or angry at the cat, but do it now even more so, that I live a life of love and forgiveness.”
The interesting thing was, within a very short while, the pain stopped and the bleeding in the same evening. The following day, yes, there was some swelling, but after maybe another day or so, there was no infection, and the swelling went down very quickly. And the healing was complete in a very short time without any scars, unlike other accidents I had in my life earlier.
It showed me the efficacy of turning completely to God and really letting God speak through you in your life.
spirituality.com host: And what about the felines? Did they continue to behave themselves?
Michael: That was the interesting thing—after that incident, they were completely back to normal. They were back to their harmonious selves. Nothing like that ever happened again.
spirituality.com host: Well, that’s good. We have a question from Fizz in Seattle, who says, “When endeavoring to pray, is it required to push aside political sympathies? When one has strong political leanings for one side or the other, what is the best way to go about praying?” I think we’ve talked a little bit about that, but maybe you’d like to elaborate on it.
Michael: I think we have. And I think Fizz is right that God would not play favorites in that sense either, to say one nation or one religion is better or holier or closer to God. No, we all have that same Mind as our source, one Life, one Truth, and one Love. So we share the same Life.
And I’ve found it actually much easier to pray for other people when I set aside my personal feelings for them. Because sometimes you think, or I think, when my wife asks me for help, for example—when I think of her as my wife, and I have this immediate feeling of love and connection with her, it sometimes makes it almost, if I can say this, a little harder to see how much God loves her. I can always see, of course very quickly, how much she is loved by God.
But then, it’s also almost always a wonderful exercise to have the same mindset with people I have never met and I might never meet again. For example, in traffic when you’re stuck in traffic and someone cuts you off, and you’re already late, the feeling is maybe to be a little resentful.
And in that moment I try to think, Now how would you think about this person if that person turned around and said to you, “I have such a terrible headache. Can you pray for me?” Wouldn’t keeping my grudge stand in the way of my prayer to see him as the loved and cherished child of God? Of course. So it helps me to put these human emotions aside and to see people, or at least to be open to seeing people, the way God sees them.
spirituality.com host: Thanks, Michael.
And now we have another question, which is from Wendy in Park City, Utah. She writes, “I awoke the other night with the thought, ‘Thou shalt do no murder,’ and realized I needed to pray along these lines for the current upheaval in the Middle East. Today I’m working with the First Commandment. In praying with the Commandments, I feel I’m praying in a language that is universally understood. The Arabs I know explained to me that they think of Allah as Spirit, as we do. I love the universality of the Commandments, and of course, Jesus’ addition, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ I know these prayers are effective. Is anyone else in this discussion praying with the Commandments? I like them because they don’t take sides.”
I think that’s a really super idea, because the basic truths of the Bible are pretty timeless. And when you think about the Commandments in particular, they also apply very universally to any culture, not just Muslim, Christian, and Jew, but I think there probably are equivalents of those Commandments in just about every religious belief, wouldn’t you think?
Michael: Even in a culture that might be a bit more foreign to us, like, let’s say, the Japanese culture, which does not have that many similarities to a monotheistic approach in religion or society—even there you have the same basic concepts of the Ten Commandments.
spirituality.com host: If you look at the situation in Lebanon from the standpoint of the Commandments, you can see that it really works on both sides—that it is a unifying thing. Basically if you had a document, a peace document, that just included the Ten Commandments, you’d probably be in pretty good shape.
Michael: And Jesus summarized the Ten Commandments so beautifully when he spoke to that young man who asked what he should do in order to inherit eternal life. Jesus basically quoted the two great commandments from Jewish Scripture, saying, “Thou shall love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbour as thyself.”
So often we might be tempted to think of an eye for an eye when we are in any conflict, and I’m not just saying that this might be particularly Judaic, but I think of Christian cultures and Christian societies, I think an eye for an eye is not far away in our initial response. But Jesus quoting, “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself”—that actually is from Leviticus, where it says, “Thou shalt not avenge, nor bear any grudge against the children of thy people, but thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself: I am the Lord.”
spirituality.com host: That gets right back to the one God, what we were talking about earlier. When you recognize God’s supremacy, and His care in your life, then you start to see your fellow beings, whatever they are—I mean, human, animal, whatever—as creations of that one God, and your sense of respect flows from your love for God.
I’ve found it helps to erase differences, because if you’re thinking of each being as created by God, then that particular being has value—as much value as you have or your relatives have. It’s not a question of, Well, I’m a superior race or culture, and you are inferior, so therefore you lack value.
Michael: That idea of inferiority or feeling superior, it might have religious elements, but I see also a great component in just being in history—that there is such a long history to this particular conflict in the Middle East. It goes back well over two thousand years.
This is an area where generation after generation rose up with a certain mindset, being educated into thinking in a certain way about the other. And so you could say that our life is really a form of self-education. We certainly have to deal with the influences of thought around us. And we have to think constantly, Is this something that I’m going to endorse, to embrace, to accept?
We have these influences on our thought every single day, and we can make a decision to say, Yes, I believe it, or, No, I don’t. Sometimes we think we are so deeply rooted into a certain society, a certain culture, that the culture does the thinking for us. And then we might think we have no choice anymore—we have to think that way. And that is not true.
I would like to tell you of an experience I had a few years ago where I saw that in someone else, how they were able to overcome that. I had an acquaintance who is Jewish, and he became severely ill. He was brought to the hospital.
In the hospital, the prognosis for him was not very good. He became very afraid, and he asked me for help. We are friends, and he knows that I am a Christian Science practitioner. He had heard of Christian Science a little bit. He was not in any way interested in its theology, but he knew that we pray, and that we expect healing and experience healing. So he asked me for help. And I came and visited him in the hospital.
We talked about his connection to God. We talked about life, the nature of life. We talked about the true spiritual substance that makes up the foundation of his life. And we did that over the course of two weeks or so as we were praying together. I visited him, oh, at least every other day, sometimes every day.
In every visit, his mother was there, sitting on a chair in the corner of the room in the hospital. And she sat there with her purse on her lap, eyeing me suspiciously. I never got much beyond saying hello and goodbye to her. She had no interest in talking to me, but she was there during my visits with her son.
Her son gradually improved—and ultimately he made a complete recovery; he was completely well when he left the hospital. But after I had been visiting him for about two weeks, his mother happened not to be in the room when I came. And he said to me, “You know, my mother is Jewish.” And I said to him, “Well, I did not know that, but I kind of expected it.”
And he said to me, “You’ve been coming to me for the last two weeks almost every day. What you have done for me by coming to me has healed my mother of her hatred towards Germans. All she knew of Germans was that they kill Jews, that they hate the Jews. That’s the generation she grew up with, and that’s all she had heard of the Germans.
“But she saw you come and visit her Jewish son almost every day, and she said she does not know what this guy does to my son, but he does it out of love. Now if there is a German who loves my son, maybe the Germans can’t be all that bad.”
That shows you how someone was able to overcome her own prejudices and see beyond and below a cultural or a religious layer, and see love expressed and acknowledge it.
spirituality.com host: That leads me to read something from Mary Baker Eddy’sMiscellaneous Writings, because I think in a way what you’re talking about is this idea. And it’s an idea that’s really pretty desperately needed in the Middle East and other places, too. Mrs. Eddy said, “The antagonistic spirit of evil is still abroad; but the greater spirit of Christ is also abroad,— …” And she went on , “… risen from the grave-clothes of tradition and the cave of ignorance.”
In a way, what you were doing there was helping that woman to overcome the belief that only the spirit of evil could be there. But that the spirit of Christ is also present, and very present, right in those places that may seem very dark and hopeless.
Michael: Exactly.
spirituality.com host: We have a question from Erin, who is writing from Woodbridge, Virginia, and she says, “I’m not the most knowledgeable person about world events, but it seems like not that long ago, things were really settling down over there—a relatively peaceful pullout took place in Gaza. What do you think the spiritual implications or underpinnings might be of a big flare-up of discord?”
Michael: We certainly all rejoiced when the Israelis and the Palestinians seemed to be getting on a bit better with each other. But I see this area as so vulnerable to any kind of provocation. It’s so volatile, because the feelings are so close to the surface—because religious feelings just go so deep with each of us.
People feel deeply about what they really believe in. And in this area, there are so many currents of thought coming close together. With Jerusalem being such an important center and symbol for each of the three monotheistic religions, the slightest disturbance is readily embraced, and at each provocation the emotions flare up again.
And I thought about that, too—why that is so. You know, as I said, religious feelings are so dear to each of us, no matter what religion we believe in. We might not talk about it all the time, but we know what we believe, and if that is challenged, we just feel upset, excited, provoked. We want to do something about it.
And the currents of thought that want to get you excited might come in the form of fundamentalism, in the form of propaganda, or in some other form. We are more ready to believe what that suggestion, what that impulse, brings into our thought, because we feel so deeply about it, and we might not readily or quickly check, Is that really true? We might be more willing to believe a lie about the other side, because it comes through the form of a religious conviction. We need to be so alert and careful to see if our response is justified.
spirituality.com host: I think it gets back, too, to the oneness of God, and to really listening for the divine direction in every step. The more that we can trust God’s direction and see that in evidence, the more that’s going to help us.
For example, one of the difficulties when the settlements were being dismantled was the amount of really serious anger people felt. And those strong emotions develop in many different ways. For some people, it’s about the land. For other people, it’s many population pressures, because Israel is a very small country. And there are all different kinds of issues that crop up that aren’t even religiously relevant.
Yet because there is that overlay of religion on that environment, it seems like it’s a religious issue, when, in reality, it is not directly related to religion. It’s just identifying itself that way. And to whatever degree we can pray to see the one Mind, God, supporting and revealing solutions that can be peaceful and strengthen people to go through with what will lead to peace, even when it sometimes looks like it’s a very long process, those things would help, don’t you think?
Michael: Yes, of course. As I said, it’s just an area that is so susceptible to any kind of provocation, and we need to love these people so much to strengthen them.
You know, fanaticism in any form might come to us wherever we are. And a certain degree of worldliness would be a breeding ground for fanaticism, because we have only a very limited view of each other and ourselves. We see ourselves as mortals—cut off, hopeless, susceptible, having to fight for ourselves.
Any suggestion that says you have to fight for yourself, you have to take to arms and kill the other person because then you will be better off, seems to be more plausible if it comes in the disguise of a religious conviction that says you will do God a favor.
Here Paul, the great Apostle, is such a wonderful example. He was pretty much of the conviction that he was doing God a favor by persecuting the Christians. But when he realized the magnitude of what life really means, of what truth really means, he wanted to become the servant and the spokesperson for Christianity, and to help spread the gospel. And this potential to realize the magnitude of God is there in each one of us.
spirituality.com host: Daphne in the United Arab Emirates asks: “How can we support the prayers of our Arab neighbors and help them realize that peace and solutions to the challenges are within them; that we are not trying to import our solutions to create a new Middle East in a Western image? There are sincere prayers in this part of the world.” We’re sure there are, Daphne. Thank you for writing. Michael, do you want to answer that one?
Michael: Absolutely. No prayer is worth more or less. We all want a good solution, and Daphne is absolutely right that the solution needs to be in a divine image. A solution where no one loses face, where we all gain from it. And wouldn’t it be a wonderful gain to see each other with a better brotherly perspective?
spirituality.com host: That’s right. And this question from friends in The Mother Church Reading Room in Boston says, “It seems that some people are associating the flare-up in the Middle East with the Second Coming. Maybe you could explain the Christian Science standpoint that God’s government doesn’t come through war.”
Michael: It’s certainly true that we don’t interpret the Bible in that perspective, that the end of the world is coming any moment now. I would say the world is big enough for all of us, and if there should be an end coming to anything, it would be an end coming to injustice and to disrespect. We certainly want to see the solution in peace on earth. That’s basically what Jesus preached.
spirituality.com host: This is a related question from Amy in Los Angeles—she’s writing from the Tenth Church Reading Room: “How do you respond to the idea that some people are likening the conflict in Lebanon to an impending Armageddon?”
I think that goes back to the same thing. You know, Jesus didn’t really promise an Armageddon. He promised the Comforter would come and lead us and teach us all things. And he didn’t deny that there might be resistance to that Comforter, but he did say that the Comforter would bring the reign of God’s government to all of us, and would be a healing and blessing influence.
Michael: Yes, you’re absolutely right. Interestingly enough, Mary Baker Eddy did speak about Armageddon, and she said: “The hour is come. The great battle of Armageddon is upon us” (Miscellaneous Writings 1883–1896, p. 177. But in what way?
Not in the way of killing people that might be of a different religious opinion or persuasion, but rather by ridding the world of evil. Not evil people, but evil—impersonal evil. And that is what we are engaged in. And every prayer, if it’s a life turned into a prayer of love, in Beirut or in Saudi Arabia or in Israel, helps and contributes to that equally and powerfully.
spirituality.com host: You know, I’m thinking of a situation—this was a long time ago in the South, where there was a man who bombed synagogues, I believe. He was a very hate-filled man. And what happened through his spiritual journey, he ended up in prison, and he used to read religious literature that increased his hatred. It was partly these religious beliefs that were inflaming his attitude.
But something happened to him in prison, and he found that he didn’t want that kind of material anymore, and his life was totally changed. And he saw the wrong that he had been doing, and he was literally transformed.
And I think that’s part of what you’re trying to say—that even a life that’s filled with hate can be turned around, and those of us who want to be on the love patrol, you might call it, don’t need to be discouraged by all the issues. They should stay with it, really stick with the prayer, and not give up.
Michael: Yes, because love and forgiveness are the real peacemakers, and they change individual lives. And if they can change individual lives, both ours and the ones around us, why cannot they have an effect on a greater number of people? Even the whole Middle East is still individual people.
spirituality.com host: Right.
Michael: It’s not one mass that needs to be somehow influenced or turned around. Not at all. There is nothing wrong with people. Everyone is an equally cherished child of God. But there is something wrong with disrespect. That needs to be seen as an evil. We cannot think two things at the same time.
When I talked about a driver that cut me off in traffic, as an example—I cannot at the same time bear a grudge and see him as a respected child of God. I have to make a decision. And by making a decision for the right perspective, I am turning into a peacemaker. And that is not a peacemaker who is willing and ready to be slaughtered the next moment, it is a powerful, effective influence on our environment.
As I said before, we feel other people’s thoughts. When you go into a room where two people were talking in that room, and these two people are interrupted by your entering, and they both turn to you—you know what kind of conversation had been happening there. You know if they were fighting, you know if they were talking about some business things, if they were personal—you just feel it. You know what’s been in the atmosphere. We feel other people’s thoughts. And in the same way, they feel our thoughts. They can’t help it. And if we turn our lives into that prayer of love and forgiveness, it has an effect.
If I can just say this quickly, I know there are more questions. But just to put some proof behind that, I have seen how that prayer of love, for example, healed that boy who had that problem with his lip. I have seen how it healed an elderly lady who was confined to her wheelchair for 40 years. When there was a new understanding that forgiveness means you take an active stand to embrace your relationship to God—means saying, “I’m not going to wait any longer for someone else to make the first step and apologize. I’m claiming my oneness with God that no one could ever have interrupted”—she was able to get up and walk again.
spirituality.com host: Good! Now let’s move on. Nancy in Los Angeles says, “I’ve been thinking lately that we have a greater need to identify ourselves first as children of God, not Americans or Republicans or Democrats, Israelis, whatever. As we do this, we might heal and love more, and have less human opinions. My family originally was Jewish, and they came into Christian Science through healing. Don’t you think we should try to get higher than cultural views of ourselves?” I think that’s a wonderful point to make, don’t you, Michael?
Michael: Oh, yes. And I don’t want to even say anything to that, because that’s so true.
spirituality.com host: And, right on, Nancy! Now this is from Eric in San Diego, California: “I have a relative currently stationed somewhere—he never tells where—in the Middle East. What words of comfort can I email him?”
Michael: That wherever he is, God is. That he can never be separated from God for an instant. And God is the same friend, and the same source of life for him that He is for anyone around him—no matter what skin color, race, religion, or culture.
spirituality.com host: This is a very helpful question, and it’s very practical. It’s from Bill in Ohio, who’s asking, “How does one pray in this situation? What does a person say or ask for?”
I just wanted to sort of look at some of the things that we know from the news. There are issues of chaos, of people being terribly afraid, being disconnected from their homes and their jobs, maybe not having transportation, all of those kinds of issues. Wouldn’t those be individual things that we could be praying about and trusting that God would help people through those experiences?
Michael: Yes. Well, there are basically two ways you can look at prayer. Prayer is certainly seen as communication with God. But that communication can go in two ways.
You can see prayer as your desire to inform God about what needs to be fixed or changed—alerting God to any specific need. Or you can see prayer as God’s way of communicating with you. You can see prayer to be the channel where you listen to God’s answer.
Mrs. Eddy found in her life experience of practicing Christian Science healing for over 40 years that that listening part is the active ingredient, as it were, in our prayer. God is not in need of being told what the problem is, but we need to listen to God’s perspective, to be assured of God’s presence, of God’s protection, of God’s love.
And I understand completely that in a situation where you are afraid, or maybe even terrified, it might be a challenge to be quiet and to listen, to pray that prayer of listening. But it doesn’t have to take a long time. God has many ways to reach you, to assure you of His love. In that situation where we might be so terrified, God will find a way to assure you that He has not forgotten about you, that your life is safe in Him.
spirituality.com host: Fred from New Hampshire has written, “Conflict in this part of the Middle East has happened for thousands of years, with different societies claiming jurisdiction over the same land, and both groups feeling it is their divine right to occupy this land. How can we as a global community ever expect peace in this region?”
Michael: I think we talked about several aspects of that already—about the fact that religious feelings here are basically hijacked, and that this area is so likely to be provoked into hostilities because of that reason.
But I see it more as a symbol, really, or even a challenge. It’s a prayer request for the whole world—maybe a symbol for the whole world to get together. No one of us lives on an island, and we cannot expect these people to work out their own problems and say, Well that doesn’t affect me. I live my peaceful life wherever I might be in the world. And it’s basically their problem to work it out.
I don’t think we can leave ourselves out of the responsibility so easily. I feel we know about it, and therefore, we have to do something about it. And the world is making progress. We should not forget that. Humanity as a whole is making progress in caring more for each other, and also the potential to care more for each other.
Today, we know pretty instantly whatever happens in the Middle East, or anywhere else around the world, for that matter. We have access to any event around the world through the Internet, through TV, radio, shortwave, and so forth. That was not the case 50 years ago. Not even 20 years ago. And that kind of increased communication also gives us an increased opportunity to use our potential for good.
There is no way but that this coming together of the global family leads to progress and leads to resolution—a resolution that would not have been possible a thousand years ago.
spirituality.com host: Curtis in New York is asking, “Why is it seemingly so hard for people to love one another if we are all God’s children?”
Michael: Because it takes a certain degree of selflessness. It means we have to look deeper than what we see on the surface. It’s much easier to say that the world is flat and that the world is the center of the universe than to say, “Now wait a moment. That’s actually not quite true, although I don’t see it. Actually the sun is the center of the solar system, but not of the universe.”
So this is not supported by what we see with our eyes. And the fact that we are all children of the same God is not supported by the physical senses. But it’s still true. It requires that we look a little deeper, but then we get to real solutions.
spirituality.com host: Dave in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, says, and this is similar to a question you answered, but he’s asking it slightly differently. He says, “I have friends who are in the Armed Forces in the Middle East. How should I pray for their safety?” That was different from the previous one who asked what message he could send to the soldier himself.
Michael: Maybe that leads a little bit into the question, How can I pray for one person’s safety if that person might be charged with a job to kill a person on the opposite side? And people there might also have relatives who pray for their safety respectively.
And there we just need to get back to the point that we cannot pray for one side to win. That would not be a prayer that is based on a spiritual foundation. That would be a prayer based on a human wish. And of course, we pray that everyone is safe.
But we can lift that prayer to a more spiritual foundation, to realize that our life is rooted in God. Paul said, “In him we live, and move, and have our being.” By the way, he said that to people in Athens—again, people who were not even familiar with the concept of one God. But still, he expected them to be able to understand that, that “In him we live, and move, and have our being.” That’s a spiritual fact that’s never going to change.
spirituality.com host: This is perhaps our last question, Michael, and it is from Sydni in Florida, who writes, “This week’s Bible Lesson [found in the Christian Science Quarterly] begins with a reference to Lebanon and ends with references to Israel, which seems so on point for what is occurring in the Middle East. One of the other significant citations is from Ephesians: ‘the whole armour of God.’ Could you relate armor of war to the armor Paul writes about in Ephesians?”
Michael: I love that passage in Ephesians. Paul writes about the armor of the Christian, and he talks about our loins being “girt about with truth,” and our “feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace.” He talks about “the helmet of salvation,” and “the shield of faith.” Now all of these elements are for the soldier’s protection. You cannot really attack someone with your helmet. That would be a little difficult. Or with your boots—well, maybe you can, but not normally.
But he adds a sixth element, and that is, “And take … the sword of Spirit, which is the word of God.” Now what is the Word of God? The Bible and the Torah start with the Word of God, “Let there be light.”
I think that’s a powerful word that we could, and should, embrace in every prayer that we pray for the world and for each other and for ourselves—that we start with that powerful declaration, “Let there be light,” in our consciousness, in our actions, in our motives. That we bring more light, more clarity, more truth into the world.
And if that is our attack weapon, our sword, that cannot hurt anyone. It only hurts evil. But not evil people, there are no evil people. It hurts evil. It destroys evil in the most effective way, because that kind of prayer, that sword of the Spirit, is able to reach people across the Atlantic, across the Pacific, around the world.
This way we can make a meaningful contribution to peace in the world. We are not limited to a radius of ten feet with a sword, to a physical sword. There is no limit to that kind of prayer.
And so that wonderful “sword of the Spirit,” which is only able to do good and to bring light—that can really help make this prophecy that this writer referred to in the Bible come about.
The prophecy that says here, in Isaiah, “Is it not yet a very little while, and Lebanon shall be turned into a fruitful field, and the fruitful field shall be esteemed as a forest?”
Why shouldn’t Lebanon be peaceful? That’s a prophecy that hints at an ever-present possibility. Our prayers here today, and ongoing, will contribute to establishing Lebanon to be a fruitful field, and Israel as well. It’s such a wonderful opportunity to be soldiers in that sense, having those weapons of God for that purpose—to bring light and peace into the world.
spirituality.com host: Thank you, Michael. That was actually a rather wonderful summary. But is there anything further you would like to say?
Michael: Just that I’m so grateful for all the people all around the world who are connected to this chat right now. It just shows how much good is going on in the world. And that good makes a difference. And thank you for having me.
spirituality.com host: Oh, sure. And for all of you who joined us, Thanks for being with us today, and for sharing your thoughts, and for your prayers for peace in the Middle East. As Michael said, they do make a difference.
Citations used in this chat
Science and Health
King James Bible