An armed police officer was threatening my friend, demanding a bribe in a country known for its corruption. Scenarios of this sort face individuals all around the world. Maybe they’re not all this extreme – a government bureaucrat says he has lost someone’s paperwork and demands fines they don’t owe. Or someone is defrauding the government by claiming benefits not due them.
What can we do? My friend chose to pray instead of conceding to the lawless demands. As a student of Christian Science, he knew that there is a spiritual law we can turn to, no matter what we are facing. In fact, each of us, standing on spiritual ground, can refuse consent to the very concept that lawlessness can exist or that we can be subject to it.
Why? Because spiritual law is the law of God. This law is forever established, always operating, all-authoritative, and wholly beneficial to one and all. As a psalm puts it, “The law of the Lord is perfect and preserves one’s life” (Psalms 19:7, New English Translation).
In the Christian Science textbook, “Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures” by the discoverer of Christian Science, Mary Baker Eddy, one way God’s law is described is as “the rule of perpetual harmony” (p. 381). As we come to understand that harmony is a rule rather than happenstance, it becomes clear that the harmony of spiritual law and the discord of lawlessness cannot coexist. And since divine law is as ever-present as its source, God, lawlessness must truly be absent.
Even in situations such as the one faced by my friend, we can recognize this and demonstrate that God’s law alone is present. We don’t have to take at face value what seems to be going on. We can listen for Christ, the true idea of God, assuring each of us of God’s ever-active authority and our wholly spiritual existence as the loved child of God, divine Spirit. Like Jesus, who exemplified Christ in his life, we can feel the power of God in our lives and see evidence of divine law operating right where we are. In my friend’s case, he was allowed to move on without paying a bribe.
His answer to lawlessness was not to fight it with more lawlessness. It was to understand, accept, and practice the higher law of Love, God. This law opens our eyes to divine Science, the truth of God’s infinite goodness, the reality of which outlaws all that isn’t good. In a powerful statement based on her own experience of being a target of injustice, Mrs. Eddy wrote, “No evidence before the material senses can close my eyes to the scientific proof that God, good, is supreme. Though clouds are round about Him, the divine justice and judgment are enthroned. Love is especially near in times of hate, and never so near as when one can be just amid lawlessness, and render good for evil” (“Miscellaneous Writings 1883-1896,” p. 277).
Wherever we are in the world, we can daily respond to the lie that divine law is absent or powerless. We can prove that the divine law of good is the only law in dealing with health issues, relationship difficulties – indeed, any part of our lives in which we need to see progress. Whether facing sickness or disease ourselves or praying for others, we can follow Jesus’ example of recognizing and demonstrating that health is an expression of God’s law. If a relationship has soured, we can stand for the truth that “the rule of perpetual harmony” is with us to foster restoration and renewal of broken bonds. Even stubborn character traits can ultimately be seen as a suppositional absence of the governing law of good, and we can see those traits dissolve, replaced by patience, wisdom, and love.
Whatever element of good seems absent from our experience, including the rule of law itself, we can look to Life, God, to lift us higher – to the apprehension of the omniactive law of good. And we can confront the opposite claim of lawlessness head-on and challenge its reality based on the same truth of God’s allness by which Jesus so successfully overcame all that was unlike God, good.
Every demonstration of the truth that God’s law is ever operative is significant. And if it’s true for us, it’s true for others, too. Everyone has the right to consent to the reality of God’s governance, the governance that Christ is revealing to each of us. To the degree that we stand for our own receptivity to Christ, we are glimpsing what’s true for all. Doing so is a powerful way of caring for ourselves and our neighbors, near and far.
Originally published as an editorial in the April 27, 2026, issue of the Christian Science Sentinel.
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