I Learned To Love My Neighbor as Christ Jesus Taught

I feel like the luckiest person in the world to have discovered this church. We all came here on different journeys from different parts of the world, but God drew us here for His purpose. Watching the news about wars around the world, I started to feel grateful to God for bringing me here. Thinking more deeply about that, the memory came to me of growing up in Nigeria as a little kid. I was born in a region of Nigeria that went through one of the worst civil wars in the history of mankind. I was born soon after the war ended. But the destruction of the war was still fresh. As I was growing up, there was no family in my village or region that didn’t suffer tremendously as a result of that. I remember my dad, who was a historian, and that was all we talked about growing up. That was all he shared with me because his family suffered so greatly. My mom also went through unbearable stuff, and that was all we talked about in the house. That talk was going on in my head growing up, and the hatred was boiling inside me. I was so small, but when you listen to these stories, and you feel you can’t help people, and in fact, you feel like you cannot hurt the enemy enough because you feel they deserve it. At the same time, it makes you question a lot of things that you believe in. Pretty much everybody in my region was raised this way.

We are being taught this story that you have to hate these people, because they actually hate you and want to wipe you out from the face of the earth. You were told growing up that it could happen again. It was like a ticking bomb every day. There were signs everywhere that fighting could break out. We grew up hating each other, and I thought it was normal to hate people. I also thought it was normal to go to war although sometimes there were necessary reasons to do it. Even as a Christian growing up in a Christian part of the country, it was normal to go to war to defend what is yours.I never knew it wasn’t a good state of mind to grow up with.

It wasn’t until I discovered this church that I began to understand what forgiveness means. I have read in the Bible that you can forgive somebody. It’s good to forgive somebody. But I thought certain people deserved forgiveness, and others who did not; Christian Science changed the way I see people. That there’s good in everybody regardless of their shortcomings and mistakes. There’s good in everyone; anyone can change. War is not the solution. I also learned here that, as Mary Baker Eddy wrote,

“The arrow that doth wound the dove
Darts not from those who watch and love.” (Hymn 31).

That hymn really changed a lot in me. If I call myself a child of God, I cannot throw an arrow at somebody. If I want somebody to change, no matter how much wrong the person has done to you, you can continue to pray for that person. No matter what the evidence is telling you. Christ Jesus said to pray for those who persecute you. When I see the news from around the world, it tells me how much the world needs God, how much the world needs Christian Science. I feel like a lot of people need to discover the Truth that I have discovered about myself, about the so-called enemies, and how much we all need God. I believe in every corner of the world, there are children of God living there. It tells me also that we, as children of God, need to work. My prayer is that the whole world can discover this Truth and practice it. There’s no other power or force that can end all this hatred and destruction, but the power of Truth, the power of God, and we can do it.