Praying About Gang Violence

Recently my Christian Science branch church voted to have a pray vigil once a month on the gang violence in our community. We are also in April 2008 going to have a Christian Science Lecture on the subject.

From my Christian Science study on this subject these are some ideas that came to me.

1. Mary Baker Eddy writes in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, “Evil has no reality. It is neither person, place, nor thing, but is simply a belief, an illusion of material sense.”(71:1-4) From this statement I realized that there are no evil persons called gang members. There is no evil place where they hang out since all space is filled with God and His goodness.

2. God made man in His own image and that is only good. Since God does not commit violence then His idea man is incapable of committing violence.

3. Man does not need to be in a gang to be safe, his protection comes from God. The Bible says The Lord shall preserve thee from all evil: he shall preserve thy soul. The Lord shall preserve thy going out and thy coming in from this time forth, and even for evermore.”(PS. 121:7, 8)

4. Since God made man he did not make man of a color or a creed. We are all the sons and daughters of God

5. Is healing of gang violence possible yes. All things are possible to God. I know of two instances.

The first was a Principal at a public school that prayed that God was the only Mind.. Through his prayer he was lead to tell leaders of various gangs in his school that they were all brothers because they all prayed the Lord’s Prayer which begins “Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name.”(Matt. 6:9) This hit home in their thought. The boys realized that they indeed all had one father. They began to see good in each other and instead of being enemies many of them became friends. They could not harm their brother.

The other instance took place at a prison. Three gangs were about to have an all out war. A man at the prison who was studying Christian Science asked if he could be a mediator between the gangs. He prayed to see each of these men as the children of God. He realized that no child of God wished harm to another child of God. He knew that right in the midst of that prison God’s love was there. He stopped a riot from taking place and gained respect of all the gang members.

The power of prayer is so powerful. I know right now the boys can feel this prayer. They can feel the love of God in their lives instead of hate. Evil has no power but to destroy itself. It cannot harm those boys nor can it touch any innocent member of our community. “Love is the liberator.”(225:21-22)