Justice and comfort at Kerala

The most basic of human rights -- the right to live -- has been trampled at Kerala, Afghanistan. Regardless of the response of the international community, however, every individual can bring justice to bear on any instance of wrong doing that commands his attention. We may not be able personally to arrest the guilty or comfort the bereaved, but we can, through prayer, make more evident to humanity the universal divine Principle that does, thus furthering the achievement of justice and mercy in human affairs.

This divine Principle is God, of whom the Bible says, "There is none else." n 1 In reality there is no other Being, no other Life, Mind, or Truth but the one good, all-powerful God -- who is expressed in man. To understand the allness of God is the most effective weapon possible against evil. Armed with this understanding the youthful David conquered a terrifying Goliath that no one else dared take on. One man's trust in the invincibleness of right won a battle that might otherwise have been forfeited.

n1 Isaiah 45:5.

The deathblow to evil is delivered by grasping its untruthfulness and impotence as the opposite of God, Truth. The reverse of Truth must be error, and this is the true classification of all evil. It is only as we face down error with complete confidence in Truth's allness that we begin to destroy error. "Error, left to itself, accumulates," n2 writes Mary Baker Eddy. n3 Elsewhere she states, "Error is a coward before Truth." n4

n2 Miscellaneous Writings,m p. 348.

n3 Mrs. Eddy is the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science.

n4 Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures,m p. 368.

The Bible tells us that when Jesus heard the news of John the Baptist's cruel execution he went off by himself. n5 It would not have been surprising if at this point Jesus had felt like leaving the world to its wickedness and withdrawing into his own private haven. Yet selfishness was not the Master's nature. The people needed the Christ, the spiritual message Jesus was bringing of God's deep love for man. This caused them to seek him out, and his inextinguishable compassion went out to all of them with mighty healing power.

n5 See Matthew 14:13.

In the aftermath of the uncovering of the Kerala massacre, one thing is the same -- the world continues its search for the healing Christ. Jesus said his followers must do the works he did -- assert the same God-derived power over evil. We can rouse ourselves from the temptation simply to withdraw in shock, in effect bow before evil, and to the best of our ability pray that the omnipotence and justice of God be made known on earth.

However great a distance separates us from the surviving villagers of Kerala, our hearts can go out to them in prayer. How can this prayer be felt thousands of miles away? In the same way that we, two thousand years after Jesus, derive comfort and healing from the Bible. Truth is eternal and infinite, surpassing barriers of time and space. Truth is God, divine Mind, and this Mind communicates its love to man directly. God is the real Mind of man, supplying his every thought. We can turn from the cries of the material senses, telling us of death and sorrow, to the messages of divine Love, reassuring us of the immortality and joy of life in God. In reality, each of us exists forever as the idea of God, complete and conscious in the realm of Mind. As St. Paul said, "In him we live, and move, and have our being." n6

n6 Acts 17:28.

We can begin to feel this life now as we arm ourselves with the consciousness of God's supremacy and the assurance of Truth's ultimate triumph over error. A murderous, vengeful mortal is no more the truth of God's child than is a grief-stricken one. Persistent denial of evil, the unmasking of it as the impossible opposite of the infinite God, good, must eventually overthrow this Goliath and reveal its nature as "a liar, and the father of it," n7 to be neither honored nor feared.

n7 John 8:44.

DAILY BIBLE VERSE The earth is the Lord's, and the fulness thereof; the world, and they that dwell therein. Psalm 24:1