Cybersecurity—every prayer counts

Advances in technology have brought many helpful tools to smooth the tasks of daily life, but with these advances have come apparent new vulnerabilities. The apps and types of devices many of us rely on are consistently being probed to determine and exploit these vulnerabilities. Whether we’re ordinary people with no technological expertise or professionals on the front lines of these issues, our prayers are vital to uncover and correct these problems and address criminal intent.  

The starting point for our prayer is to realize that there’s only one divine Mind, God, that governs each of us as Mind’s ideas. As we grow to understand and express this divine Mind, solutions are uncovered, and bad behavior is diminished.     

But are these security challenges really new? Or are they just another phase of animal magnetism? Animal magnetism is the seeming pull on the human mind to keep it focused on matter or evil. Sometimes it can seem to constantly bombard thought. It leads to the criminal element that probes software and devices for vulnerabilities.

Mary Baker Eddy, who discovered Christian Science, says this about animal magnetism: “The mild forms of animal magnetism are disappearing, and its aggressive features are coming to the front. The looms of crime, hidden in the dark recesses of mortal thought, are every hour weaving webs more complicated and subtle. So secret are the present methods of animal magnetism that they ensnare the age into indolence, and produce the very apathy on the subject which the criminal desires” (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 102). 

In God’s all-good creation, there is no wrongdoing and no hidden vulnerabilities—only perfection. 

As with any form of evil, we shouldn’t close our eyes to security threats to technology; doing that doesn’t contribute to stopping them. It’s important that technical vulnerabilities are revealed to the producers of apps and devices, because once a vulnerability is identified, the app or device can be modified to make it more secure. Those are some human footsteps that can come to light through persistent prayer. And we can feel secure in Jesus’ counsel: “Fear them not therefore: for there is nothing covered, that shall not be revealed; and hid, that shall not be known” (Matthew 10:26). Divine Mind reveals the ideas needed to protect our thoughts and activities.

Prayer awakens thought to understand and experience more of God’s goodness, power, and supremacy, and His invulnerable creation. In God’s all-good creation, there is no wrongdoing, no unsolvable problems, and no hidden vulnerabilities—only perfection. When our thought opens up to acknowledge this invulnerable creation, we see more evidence of it in our day-to-day lives. 

I was a computer programmer in my first career. On more than one occasion, my initial approach to solving a coding challenge would be very complicated, a tangled mess. But if I would stop and pray, many times what some would call an elegant solution would come to thought. It would be profound in its simplicity.

My prayers regarding such situations included affirming that God is Mind. As God’s idea, I reflect Mind in intelligence. Sometimes if there seemed to be conflicting priorities, I would prayerfully work with the idea that because God is infinite, there is only one Mind governing all. I saw that as applying to a project or a situation. Then I would listen for the next step or idea. When my thought was receptive and quiet, an answer would always come or be apparent. 

Recently, I listened to a radio interview of a cyber psychologist. She investigates cybercrimes. Her view is that in cyberspace there’s more opportunity for criminal acts and everything happens faster, so it tends to amplify and accelerate bad behavior. The belief that evil could ever be amplified and accelerated really bothered me, and my prayers even felt like a tangled mess.

As I continued to pray about what was said, the following simple, but profound, idea blew away all my concerns: Evil can’t be accelerated or amplified, because, in reality, there is nothing bigger than All and nothing faster than now. God is All—right now. God is infinite, filling all space, so there’s actually no place for evil. 

One way that we may seem to let evil “hide out” in thought is to think that some exploitative technical issues that we hear about or may have experienced are too complicated to understand, so we’ll leave them to people who understand them. But if an issue seems more complicated or frightening because it involves technology, it can still be addressed in prayer as just another form of mortal belief. 

In reality, there is nothing bigger than All and nothing faster than now. 

What needs to be prayerfully dealt with are unreal mental traits, but they have no power over us when we side with omnipotent Mind. With the firm understanding that divine Mind gives each of us exactly the ideas we need, we can counter the thought that any problem is too complicated to deal with. These spiritual ideas are understandable, and we can be obedient to Mind’s direction in every situation we encounter. In many cases, others may be addressing the actual technical aspects of a situation, but we never have an excuse not to pray. “Know, then, that you possess sovereign power to think and act rightly, and that nothing can dispossess you of this heritage and trespass on Love” (Mary Baker Eddy, Pulpit and Press, p. 3). 

In my prayers for mankind, I’ve found it helpful to identify man (the true identity of everyone) correctly. Healing an individual of wrongdoing isn’t changing a bad mortal. It’s seeing the person’s true identity as a child of God and the fact that one’s real, spiritual nature protects him or her from even wanting to do wrong. In reality, man is not a greedy, conniving mortal, but a loving and blessed immortal. Everyone’s true being is spiritual. We are all the reflection of divine Love, God, incapable of evil.  

The light of Christ, the true idea of God, shines on all to destroy error and reveal the real man of God’s creating. This man is safe—and invulnerable from doing wrong, or being affected by wrongdoing or any belief of evil. In reality, nothing is outside divine Love’s protecting care. 

We need to pray consistently and persistently to identify ourselves, our family, and also all mankind, as truly protected, guided, guarded, and directed by divine Mind, Truth, and Love. Every prayer counts and is needed, and contributes in a degree to increased protection and blessings for all mankind.

Our safety is in God’s omnipotence, omnipresence, and supremacy. Moment by moment we can mentally lift any situation above material evidence to Spirit, where God’s idea man is always protected by divine Love. From this vantage point, we can discover and prove that we truly are protected from evil of every kind.