God fills all space.

So what if human invention has created a "new" space, an electronic locale, and has called it "cyberspace"? Can this previously uncharted territory exist outside of infinite Spirit, God, and His invariable laws of good, and be used as an avenue for evil? Or can it be a space where good exists independent of God, a material environment beneficial in and of itself?

Spiritually weighed, neither of the above is possible. Cyberspace does not alter the true rules of the universe, the spiritual law of good that outlaws all evil. Nor can a material form usurp God's infinite supremacy. The Internet is a detrimental or constructive influence according to whether the impulse to produce or to consume its communications is selfish and mortal, or Christly and spiritual.

There are many evidences of the desire to use the Internet to communicate good. For instance, the Internet carries the Bible's timeless message even to those living in countries where association with Christians is illegal. A World Wide Web page for the Church of Christ, Scientist, carries news of the Comforter—including articles such as this one—to many without prior access to such news of spiritual healing and regeneration.

But what of the negative uses of the Internet, news groups, the World Wide Web, and the various on-line services? Pornography, hate literature, and blasphemous writings can be circulated electronically. And even apart from these unseemly extremes, "surfing" these new avenues of information can turn up a good deal that is utterly trivial. Going on-line can mean opening the door to an avalanche of insubstantial or negative influences and information.

But it needn't be so. As on land, so in cyberspace, we can travel with a moral compass! In exploring the increasingly popular World Wide Web, for instance, it's vital to be alert self-censors, just as we would be wise book buyers, disciplined television viewers, and selective culture consumers.

If it has become clear to us through spiritual growth and Christian regeneration how detrimental it is to our sense of God's presence—and experience of His love—to indulge an appetite for sensuality, this isn't altered just because we are in cyberspace. That which would undermine the purity of our thought through sensual or hateful images is no more or less fatal to our happiness because it comes to us through a personal computer instead of through a more public arena.

We also need to care for the needs of known and unknown "cyber-neighbors." We best accentuate the positive possibilities of the Internet by instigating a prayerful "watch," affirming that all reality is divine. Reality is not intruded upon by any material element or development, and understanding this brings spiritual support to all. According to the Bible, God is omnipresent. This fact of God's nature is affirmed by Mary Baker Eddy in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures. She writes, "He fills all space, and it is impossible to conceive of such omnipresence and individuality except as infinite Spirit or Mind" (p. 331).

That doesn't mean that God is in the bulletin boards and Web pages hosted by computers connected across the globe. Nor is divine Spirit carried in the material links that make up the Internet. Rather, even in the face of an electronic network that seems to be circulating mainly material concepts, we can affirm that omnipresent Mind is the only reality. Mind is always imparting purely spiritual concepts, and this is the only real message man can desire or receive. Our prayers confirm this oneness of true communication.

Such prayer includes replacing the material sense of a fallible and variable man-made system with the spiritual perception of the perfect idea it really represents. Science and Health explains, "The intercommunication is always from God to His idea, man" (p. 284).

This spiritual communication takes place ceaselessly, as the outcome of God's infinite and eternal, self-revealing omnipresence. This divine self-revelation, the Christ message, presenting the healing truth of spiritual reality, speaks to men, women, and children—today, tomorrow, and forever.

A little less than two thousand years before today's high-tech revolution, Christ Jesus proved the healing outcome of God's instantaneous communications to humanity, totally unbounded by time and distance. The Bible records the healing of a nobleman's son who was seriously ill in Capernaum (see John 4:46–53). He recovered from the life-threatening condition at the instant when Jesus prayed for him in faraway Cana. Putting this kind of prayer into practice is vital to humanity, whether a specific impetus to do so comes from a face-to-face encounter in the street or through a carried electronically across the globe.

Embracing high-tech means for reaching others is constructive to the degree that a healing impetus lies behind efforts to do so. Since millions are already looking to this new environment for information, friendship, and communication, the availability of a Christly outreach in its midst is crucial. Those who understand the difference scientific prayer makes to all human experience will discern the demand cyberspace makes on them to disarm it of its offenses, and to harvest its opportunities.

Like every other environment we may find ourselves in, cyberspace is susceptible to whatever we hold in thought about it. We can faithfully pray to recognize the Christ, Truth, as unshakably present in the midst of the worldwide "cyber-community," just as we would for Christ's presence in our home or neighborhood. In this way we support its potential to serve, rather than to soil, the highest hopes and happiness of humankind.