Praying about violence

The topic of violence and what to do about it is at the forefront of thought these days. That it appears to be affecting the lives of children and teenagers to a greater degree reinforces how paramount it is to find solutions.

Violence prevention programs, such as neighborhood watches and community collaboration with the police, have been springing into action in many places. I’ve also found that prayer that turns to God – divine Love itself – is a vital approach to counteracting violent tendencies. How true it is that when we take our most sacred desires to God and listen in the deepest places of our hearts, He responds. Through such prayer, solid and genuine answers come that help us individually contribute to a more peaceful world.

Prayer based on the teachings of Bible-based Christian Science – discovered by Mary Baker Eddy – has been my approach to handling all kinds of life’s issues for decades. So recently, moved by a desire to see a lessening of violence in the world around us, I felt an urgency to gain a glimpse of God’s view about the problem of violence, and trustingly turned to God.

Although violence is generally defined as physical aggression with the intent to harm, when I looked up the word, the entry also mentioned such traits as confusion, roughness, intensity, and unrestraint.

As I read this list, the phrase “the fruit of the Spirit” came to me, which I recognized as being from the King James Bible (Galatians 5:22). The specific passage it’s used in includes a list of qualities; it’s rendered like this in the God’s Word translation: “But the spiritual nature produces love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There are no laws against things like that” (Galatians 5:22, 23).

I began to contemplate these spiritual qualities, which come from Spirit, God – and therefore can’t be affected or touched by material impulses. In the Sermon on the Mount, Christ Jesus taught that the expression of such qualities as meekness, purity, and peace spiritualizes thought. This inevitably blesses, bringing to individual consciousness the revelation of God and His ever-present kingdom of love and good – a revelation through which Jesus transformed and healed lives, promising this was possible for all of us.

Infinite Spirit couldn’t include a single element of materiality or physicality. This powerful truth means that Spirit’s likeness – including all of us – is wholly spiritual and good, not mortal and susceptible to brutality. God’s creation includes no violence, and this is the pure truth about everyone.

From this divine premise, it is natural for each of us to be loving, joyful, patient, gentle – to manifest “the fruit of the Spirit” – which leaves no space for aggression of any sort. Even though the material picture often suggests otherwise, these qualities make up our very identity. We can’t be separated from them any more than we can be separated from God. Everyone is capable of sincerely expressing them.

Suddenly what flashed before me in thought were the moments of impatience and agitation that I still yielded to at times. I saw that these milder forms of antagonism could be addressed daily from the basis of our God-given nature of serenity and gentleness, innate to our spiritual identity in all circumstances. And over the next few days, as I strove to do this, I observed that being alert to rejecting agitation in any form and instead yielding to “the fruit of the Spirit” helped keep my thought more clear and calm when interferences or obstructions arose.

The radiance of “the fruit of the Spirit” expressed in our experience is like light that fills a room and leaves no dark corners. These qualities outshine disturbed and disturbing thoughts, because such thoughts don’t originate in God, and so are powerless.

Like putting out a small spark before a larger fire erupts, each of us can pray daily to render powerless in our own thinking any small kindling of harshness, playing a part in contributing to the lessening of violence in the world. We have quite a ways to go before all violence is wiped out. But day by day, we can feel the blessedness of moments washed over with “the fruit of the Spirit” that brings out a strengthened, uplifted calm.