Skip to footer

To move beyond past wrongs

A Christian Science perspective: Shedding our ‘victim’ label frees us.

  • By David C. Kennedy

As a recent Monitor editorial explains, many nations hang on to historic, sometimes even ancient, wrongs done to them by other countries (“Ending modern wars driven by ancient wrongs,” CSMonitor.com, Oct. 19, 2016). This collective sense of victimhood too often drives foreign policy in the direction of aggression and war, bringing tremendous suffering on innocent people.

It may be easy for you and me to see the folly of nations dredging up long-gone reasons for war, instead of recognizing the benefits of moving forward toward greater peace and cooperation. But are we always awake to the ways in which we ourselves hang on to past wrongs done to us – and the mental, emotional, and even physical suffering this can bring?

Moving beyond a sense of victimhood (concerning ourselves, or in sympathy for others) may not be easy, but we have a powerful remedy in praying to gain a more spiritual understanding of the safety and supreme care that God, divine Love, provides for everyone. As we learn that we’re far more than the vulnerable mortals we seem to be, we begin to feel a surer trust in God, and we lose our fear that others can hurt us.

The Apostle Paul said that we “have our being” in God (see Acts 17:28). To have our very being in God means there isn’t another power that can truly interfere with God’s loving government of anyone. This isn’t how things look from a material standpoint, but this deeply reassuring spiritual reality becomes more real to us, and more evident in our lives, as we exchange the resentment, hatred, and fear inherent in a material concept of life for the joy, trust in God, and love for others that come with the spiritual understanding that our, and everyone’s, life is in God.

Christ Jesus said: “Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you; that ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven” (Matthew 5:44, 45).

To love those who have wronged us, and forgive them, is to know our and their real status as the loved children of God. This doesn’t gloss over any tendency toward wrongdoing – a tendency that will sooner or later need to be corrected. But it frees us from the unhappiness and destructive effects of believing we are or can be victims of evil, and supports the regeneration of those who need it.

Our own spiritual regeneration in learning to love frees us in all directions. We are not victims but truly are children of God, His own image, forever expressing His goodness and forever governed by Him with perfect consistency, infinitely loved. There can be no loss under Love’s care for us, no harm or impediment to progress and fulfillment.

Mary Baker Eddy, who discovered and founded Christian Science, writes: “Divine Love is our hope, strength, and shield. We have nothing to fear when Love is at the helm of thought, but everything to enjoy on earth and in heaven” (“Miscellaneous Writings 1883-1896,” p. 113).

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Enjoying this content?
Explore the power of gratitude with the Thanksgiving Bible Lesson – free online through December 31, 2024. Available in English, French, German, Spanish, and (new this year) Portuguese.
Read the Thanksgiving Lesson
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to To move beyond past wrongs
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/A-Christian-Science-Perspective/2016/1102/To-move-beyond-past-wrongs
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe