Racial strife is a dangerous and malevolent battle tactic of godlessness. Seeking to destroy the native unity between individuals and rip apart the fabric of society, it would attack the very roots of spiritual being. We can find immense encouragement in the fact that such an attempt must prove abortive and that through prayer the facts of spiritual being can emerge more forcefully on the human scene.

The underlying thought in racism—progenitor of racial violence—is that man is material and that some individuals are inherently inferior to others. This attitude falsely exalts matter and mortality to positions of actuality, causality, and power. In doing so, it denies the allness of God and His manifestation. In a devalued concept of creation such as this, it follows that human lives have unleashed on them the forces of hatred, selfishness, fear, and prejudice, triggering the reaction of violence.

Racial oppression and reactive violence—these are the elements of a crisis whose solution urgently demands concerted effort on everyone's part. While rectifying legislation may ultimately find its way onto statute books around the world, the primary need is for a spiritual solution. All must come to see their true identity as children of the one Father—neither dominating nor oppressed. That will increasingly take place as God is recognized as the only cause, the only power over man and the universe.

A common but actually groundless fear may arise when the scope of the task is considered. This is a fear that the task is too big for any individual or group to handle, that the magnitude of evil is overpowering. Such arguments only serve as a prop for racial strife by offering no curbs to its expression. It should be clear to us, however, that ultimate solutions are available—and that they can be brought about by the Christ, Truth, spiritually leavening mankind's outlook and generating whatever social and political actions may be needed.

The human, mortal mind is the root of the evils appearing to beset mankind. This fraudulent claimant to intelligence allegedly concocts images, concepts, suggestions, and beliefs that—unless we are spiritually alert—pass for the reality. Mrs. Eddy writes in Science and Health: "Mortal minds sees what it believes as certainly as it believes what it sees. It feels, hears, and sees its own thoughts." ^{Science and Health, p. 86;}

The solution to racial strife, then, lies outside this false, so-called mind. The belief that there is such a mind must be displaced by the infinite, total power of God, the divine Mind which Jesus called "Father." We must obey Paul's injunction, "Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus." ^{Phil. 2:5;}

As this happens—as we increasingly see with Mind's pure discernment, consciously and actively reflecting divine Mind, letting it become our Mind—we will cease to suffer racial strife. On the basis of Mind's omnipotence the apparent ability of things that are not a part of God and His universe to afflict the world with their claims will be diminished and annulled. We will discover that regardless of how real the destruction and misery of racial strife may seem at present, it has no objective existence. We will instead correctly identify it as part of the material phantasmagoria of mortal mind, a type of disturbed thought projecting itself as the agony of a society, a nation, even an individual. "Truth and Love," Mrs. Eddy tells us, "enlighten the understanding, in whose 'light shall we see light;' and this illumination is reflected spiritually by all who walk in the light and turn away from a false material sense." ^{Science and Health, p. 510.}

By vividly recognizing the unreality of racial strife, we'll be doing much to dispel even its apparent existence. Then mankind will increasingly experience what is actually going on: the concord and unity of divine Love's ideas. To the degree that we persistently rid our thought of the false and replace it with the true, the claims of godlessness will fall away, and man in God's image will become more evident as the only reality.