To help undercut tyranny
This week’s events in Myanmar, among others, may make cycles of oppression in the world seem inevitable. But through prayer inspired by the light of Christ, each of us can play a role in elevating human consciousness, contributing to an atmosphere that’s more consistently supportive of good.
After several years of working to transition into a democracy, this week the country of Myanmar was suddenly jolted back to authoritarian rule by a military coup. It’s a sad and ominous development for many in that country who had hoped that military rule was a thing of the past. And Myanmar isn’t the only country where authoritarianism is reasserting itself.
There are social and political explanations as to why tyranny keeps reappearing. But those are actually describing the surface effects of something taking place on a deeper level. “Where there is no vision, the people perish,” the Bible says (Proverbs 29:18). A clear understanding of the supremacy of God, who is infinite good, actually opens the door to freedom from suffering.
It’s not yet generally recognized that prevailing conceptions of God manifest themselves in humanity’s collective experience. In explaining the effects on society of materially based beliefs about God, the founder of the Monitor, Mary Baker Eddy, writes in the textbook of Christian Science, “Tyranny, intolerance, and bloodshed, wherever found, arise from the belief that the infinite is formed after the pattern of mortal personality, passion, and impulse” (“Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures,” p. 94).
If God is believed to be a magnified version of mortals – capable of both good and evil, love and hate – then evil seems to have a God-established place in creation for which there is no remedy, because creation emanates from the creator. Thankfully, there is a higher concept of God to turn to, one which Christ Jesus taught and proved in his healing ministry. He said, “God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth” (John 4:24).
A growing understanding that God is infinite Spirit, forever harmonious and good, begins to replace the mistaken concepts of God that fuel tyranny. If God is infinite good, then the men and women of God’s creating innately partake of God’s goodness, expressing it in qualities such as wisdom, justice, unselfishness, and unity. And all are governed by God, the divine Principle of being, which governs justly and rightly.
Individuals today can and do pray to affirm this higher understanding of God, and prove through the healing of their own difficulties that what God has created is spiritual, harmonious, and good. This in turn brings the natural desire to look outward and benefit humanity more broadly, a development that the writer of First Timothy in the Bible strongly encourages: “I exhort therefore, that, first of all, supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks, be made for all men; for kings, and for all that are in authority; that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty” (2:1, 2).
The spiritual light that fills one’s thought in prayer is the light of the Christ – the saving, healing Truth that Christ Jesus represented and embodied centuries ago. Because the Christ is eternal, it’s forever here to spiritually transform our sense of God, and to do the same for all those whom our prayers embrace.
The influence of the Christ in human consciousness brings the kind of change that Mrs. Eddy describes in another of her works, “The People’s Idea of God”: “Proportionately as the people’s belief of God, in every age, has been dematerialized and unfinited has their Deity become good; no longer a personal tyrant or a molten image, but the divine Life, Truth, and Love, – Life without beginning or ending, Truth without a lapse or error, and Love universal, infinite, eternal. This more perfect idea, held constantly before the people’s mind, must have a benign and elevating influence upon the character of nations as well as individuals, and will lift man ultimately to the understanding that our ideals form our characters, that as a man ‘thinketh in his heart, so is he’” (pp. 2-3).
We don’t know the times or the ways in which the light of Truth will find quiet access to human hearts and the societies and nations they inhabit. But our persistent, prayerful acknowledgment of God as supreme, infinite good will help cleanse human consciousness of its destructive elements, making it more supportive and productive of good in society and in government, and making it harder for tyranny to gain a foothold.
Some more great ideas! To read or listen to an article on overcoming superstition, please click through to a recent article on www.JSH-Online.com titled “Governed by God, not the planets.” There is no paywall for this content.