Is it naive to believe that prayer can stop crime? Not at all.

You probably wouldn't peg my friend Betty Ann as a crime-stopper. But she's helped prevent thousands of crimes and saved thousands of young people from drug and alcohol abuse. She's been named "Woman of the Year" by the Governor of Florida. And she's based it all on prayer.

Betty Ann's career as a crime-stopper began early one morning almost twenty years ago when she was studying the Bible and Science and Health by Mrs. Eddy. As she read, she was praying about some deeply distressing news she'd just heard. A fourteen-year-old girl in her neighborhood had been sexually assaulted by a man who'd been terrorizing women in the area for months.

As she prayed, though, a calm conviction about God's goodness took hold of her thinking—a simple admission to herself that no situation was beyond God's law. That no one—not even the rapist himself—was beyond God's absolute control.

And she saw that God's control was purely good. It was incapable of allowing evil to steamroller the rights of innocent citizens. Incapable of allowing people to bring tragedy on themselves and others. She knew that somehow conscientious prayer could turn back—even heal—the tide of lawlessness that was washing over her community.

Then specific ideas about putting her prayers into practice started to come. She set up a "citizens' crime watch" in her neighborhood—one of the first in the United States. Right from the start the plan was a success. Neighbors who'd never met began to care for each other—to watch out for each other. And as they worked together, they were able to prevent robberies and assaults from happening.

The plan worked so well that it spread to the whole county, then to two adjoining counties, and then statewide. Of course, there were times when it looked as if the whole operation would fold. But Betty Ann would think, "This idea came as the result of prayer. ... So it can't fail!" And time after time, often while she was praying, innovative ideas would come to her for solving the problem at hand.

Over the years, she's founded several organizations to help families struggling with drug and alcohol dependency. And for all this, she's received further statewide and national acclaim.

Betty Ann's work illustrates the natural, practical relationship between understanding God and fighting crime. Catching even the slightest glimpse of God's allness helps us know that evil—the self-proclaimed opposite of God's goodness—is not what it claims. It's simply not the relentless reality it seems to be. Faced with the omnipotence and ever-presence of God, evil just has to be a washout, a nonentity.

Becoming aware of the nothingness of evil is the first great step toward destroying criminality and restoring peace in a community. As Mrs. Eddy explains in Science and Health: "Mankind must learn that evil is not power. Its so-called despotism is but a phase of nothingness. Christian Science despoils the kingdom of evil, and pre-eminently promotes affection and virtue in families and therefore in the community."

But do we all really have to become involved in the fight against crime? Do we all have to care and pray about our neighbor's problems as well as our own?

Christ Jesus tells a compelling story about just how far we need to carry our love and concern for our neighbor. He describes a man who's assaulted, robbed, and left for dead on the side of the road. And no one will help him. Finally, a man from an enemy country, Samaria, stops and cares for the wounded man. Jesus tells his listeners, "Go, and do thou likewise."

The Christian Scientist, too, just naturally wants to help his neighbor out, and to be a crime-stopper, if necessary. As Mrs. Eddy writes in Science and Health: "... those who discern Christian Science will hold crime in check. They will aid in the ejection of error. They will maintain law and order, and cheerfully await the certainty of ultimate perfection."

This doesn't mean that we all have to join anticrime organizations, although, as in Betty Ann's case, these activities can be effective when they're backed up by what you might call a spiritual perspective—by unselfish love and by faith in the redeemability of all men and women.

A natural way to achieve this spiritual perspective is through prayer, through drawing near to God as the source of all love and through identifying all His children as He sees them—spiritual, perfect, sinless. To God, there are no unsalvageable children, no hardened wrongdoers. His children aren't driven to steal, lie, cheat, and gratify passions. In reality, they're already supremely satisfied with His infinite spiritual goodness.

Without the spiritual perspective that prayer brings to the war against crime—without our feeling God's presence right in the midst of the situation we long to heal—our efforts to "watch out" for crime might be mere exercises in futility. As the Psalmist writes, "Except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain."

Prayer identifies and helps bring out the good in any situation, any person, by separating the chaff from the wheat of true manhood and womanhood. Prayer actually destroys the carnal-mindedness that would lie, steal, or murder, and thus frees the individual from sinful influences. Prayer rightly identifies the real criminal, not as a despicable person, but as the dead-end, sensual thinking manipulating a person. In Science and Health Mrs. Eddy describes this kind of thinking as "mortal mind," which is, by definition, mortal—doomed to self-destruct, to dissolve in its own unreality.

At one time, when I worked as a volunteer counselor at the Dade County Jail in Miami, I had weekly visits with convicted criminals of all sorts. Sometimes I'd be intimidated when I heard the crimes these people were "in for"—armed robbery, assault, rape, murder. But I learned to look beyond these reputations, to find through prayer the essence of their real manhood and womanhood. And, without fail, I found something special in their true nature—something worth befriending, worth saving, worth really loving in each one of them. This "something" was the Christ, their Godlikeness asserting itself. And as I responded to the pure goodness of their true nature, they seemed to respond to the same quality in me. I honestly believe this kind of communication helped some of these men and women. Some of them even said so. And I know it helped me.

Looking for and responding to the Christ expressed in each other is the basis for true crime-stopping. It's something we can do whether we're on the front lines in the war against crime or praying quietly at home. And it's crime-stopping that works.

Mary Metzner Trammell