Disarmament

Nuclear disarmament isn't forwarded by governments alone. Individual citizens can also play an active role in this process. They can help to disarm fear -- fear springing from the belief that the world is made up of victimizers and victims, the powerful and the powerless, and that the only way to gain power is to overpower someone else.

Disarming the fear of victimization may sound as challenging as nuclear disarmament itself. But the Bible provides reassurance. For example, in the account of David and Goliath, Saul's army was paralyzed by the threats of the Philistine giant, Goliath. David, however, wasn't victimized, because he knew and acknowledged but one real power. Recounting his prior experience to Saul, he said, ''The Lord that delivered me out of the paw of the lion, and out of the paw of the bear, he will deliver me out of the hand of this Philistine.''n1 This view, more than the weapon he used, enabled David to disarm and destroy the Philistine.

n1 I Samuel 17:37

The God who defended David and who defends us is not a nationalistic Deity that protects one nation over another, though some may view Him in this way. God is the one All-power, establishing and governing His spiritual creation through His absolute supremacy.

What would victimize and terrorize us with a threat of nuclear holocaust is the view that God might have forgotten us, that He no longer cares for creation, or that He is not really the only power there is. Christ Jesus proved that it is our right to challenge with the truth of God's all-power any force that would seem to oppose God.

Jesus stepped in where disease, immorality, genetic pronouncements, and even death would have victimized individuals -- he disarmed the threat and healed them. He himself triumphed over the cruelest death his enemies could inflict on him. His message to his followers after his triumph was that they continue his work. Christians today have the great opportunity to help humankind find God to be the only power; to neutralize and disarm threats of ''power'' operating without divine authority.

Mary Baker Eddy, who discovered and founded Christian Science, was a close student of Christ Jesus' teachings. A major result of her prayers and of her effort to live as Jesus taught was her book Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures. In it she writes, ''The despotic tendencies, inherent in mortal mind and always germinating in new forms of tyranny, must be rooted out through the action of the divine Mind.''n2 Mortal mind is the very opposite of what the Bible speaks of when it states, ''Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus.''n3 This mortal, death-bound state of thought -- with its fears and threats, its victims and victimizers -- is disarmed by an understanding of God, who constantly shows us His power and presence.

n2 Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 225.

n3 Philippians 2:5.

Like David, we can bring to our homeland and our world the blessing of the certainty of God's supremacy. Praying to understand and do the will of God and living what we know of the Christ, we will see more clearly the divine power at work, and we will be freer to see and do what will break the mental paralysis of tyranny and fear.

This is no merely passive prayer of hope. There can be no lasting resistance to God and His Christ, for divine Love is supreme here and now. Love does awaken resistant human thought to its absolute control, shaping even this human scene to its grand design. DAILY BIBLE VERSE My kindness shall not depart from thee, neither shall the covenant of my peace be removed, saith the Lord that hath mercy on thee. Isaiah 54:10