Q: Can we pray about technology "viruses," like we might pray about disease?

This is the current "Question of the Week" on JSH-Online, and what I posted in response.

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A: Yes, I certainly do!

Most of the technology viruses I seem to hear about fall into three categories: either they were developed by someone maliciously to access private information, developed with the somewhat less malicious intent of getting advertisements in front of people, or seem to develop over time as technology begins to be out of date. So, behind all three of those types, I see mistakes about the nature of man and the universe that I can correct through prayer.

In the first case, I can know that God’s children are the direct outcomes of Him. The only thing they can manifest are His qualities of goodness, love, respect, etc. They represent divine Mind, and as such can’t include an evil intention of harming others.

In the second case, I can know that both I and whoever is trying to market things to me, can be free from a false sense of manipulation—me from being manipulated by another to think or feel the way they want me to; the other parties from feeling that manipulation is not only an acceptable, but also an effective way to achieve success in their business or cause. Again, divine Mind is supplying all of us with right thoughts and motives, and wakes us up from a deluded sense of human will as something effective.

In the last case, I handle it as a belief of aging. I mean, isn’t the way we think of aging technology eerily similar to how we think of aging material bodies? I love the explanation I read/heard somewhere recently in one of the periodicals that what we think of as aging is just an accumulation of false beliefs that we haven’t handled, that is, seen the nothingness of. And that’s just how we think of old technology—it isn’t properly squashing new security threats, and so it gets slow, malfunctions, or—we even use this word for it—dies! 

So, to counter this type of imposition, we can take a few steps that are a lot like prayer to heal or prevent disease. Updating our anti-virus software is a lot like working with the Bible and Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures—possibly through the Weekly Bible Lesson—to glean new ideas or new applications of ideas and use them in our daily lives. Learning to spot email scams is a lot like becoming so familiar with Truth, God, that anything erroneous is really obvious to us and we dismiss it instantly. And deciding when to upgrade to new technology is a lot like listening for inspiration about when it’s appropriate to move on to new life experiences, such as jobs, homes, or relationships—or when it’s time to move up higher in our reliance on God in any kind of situation, including for our sense of health and well-being.

So I think it’s mostly about being alert, listening for inspiration—to our intuition or spiritual sense, and acting on the guidance we’re given. Those activities preserve us from all kinds of ills—bodily and technological included.

An instANTaneous experience

In my recent thoughts about my neighbors in the insect world, I've been reminded of a pretty definitive experience I had a few years ago. Since this is so long overdue, I'll save the recent thoughts for later posts.

So, picture it! I've just bought a lovely townhome and am approaching the end of my quest to furnish it. I'm on the search for the ever-elusive "kitchen table." I have an eat-in kitchen, and although it's not where I intend to eat, it's this big empty space and I would like a practical way to fill it. A table and chairs seem the thing. But I don't want to spend a lot of money, and I want something with character. I am happy to find a wooden "porch table" and four chairs at a nearby antique dealer. The price is right, and I take them home. I set them all out on my back deck to initiate my plan to give them even more character: a good sanding and a coat of spray paint. 

And this is where the real adventure begins. 

As I'm sanding one of the chairs, I pause and look at the other pieces of furniture. Much to my dismay, I see a steady stream of ants filing in and out of the table top. This is when a barrage of not-so-helpful mental suggestions begin, uncannily, to file in and out of my thought. Fortunately, I am already in the habit of refuting these aggressive types of thoughts with what I know to be true about God and His kingdom.

The first to attack is self-condemnation. Posing as my own thought, it chides me for being so hasty to buy a table and chairs that had been setting outside on a lawn for an amount of time I naïvely didn't even think to ask about. It berates me for failing to check for evidence of insect activity or rot. And it questions, Did I even really need this table and chairs? Self-condemnation essentially asserts that I have created this problem and am stuck with the consequences. But this suggestion is stopped in its tracks once I recognize it as an impostor. When we're working with God, there's no such thing as "stuck."  "The things which are impossible with men are possible with God" (Luke 18:27).

So now that I'm no longer blaming myself, the suggestion is that the problem is real and thus in need of fixing. And in moves a virtual can-can line of potential material solutions: Smoke. Extreme cold. Upending the table. Shaking it. Poisons. Sprays. Lures. So many products on the market for pest removal! So many tantalizing promises of zapping the little boogers and ridding my pretty project of them . . .

And right as the can-can line finishes its number, in steals the doubt that any "solution" will actually work: those little ants are in that table. How could I ever be sure they were all out? Would I really want to bring the table into my house knowing they could be lurking?

And that's when the light really breaks through. These are all just distractions. They need to be, and can be silenced with the truth. So I head up to my office to work with this week's Christian Science Bible Lesson. I know that's where I'll find the ideas to neutralize this situation. I open up the Bible and the first thing I come to is this:

Am I a God at hand, saith the Lord,

and not a God afar off?

Can any hide himself in secret places

that I shall not see him? saith the Lord.

Do not I fill heaven and earth? 

saith the Lord.

 (Jeremiah 23:23-24)

Then two "thoughts of peace," as it were, come gently to me.

1) Hey! God can see everywhere! Even into a teeny tunnel in a table! Of course, He can only see the good that He made (see Genesis 1:31). So something bad can't be hiding out of His sight. In fact, He (and His goodness) are actually filling all space. And I don't have to do anything to make this true. 

2) That means I don't need to "get rid of ants." Just like every other case in Christian Science, I'm simply correcting thought. And me correcting thought is really me listening for the true ideas from God that replace the wrong thought--and this replacement is what restores harmony, brings healing. God is "at hand." Right here. Right now.  . . . So, I think I'm done here . . . ?

I tentatively head back down to the deck to resume the project. I figure I should not look at the place where the ants have been--because I know that I need to focus on thought, not matter, for my evidence of a resolution, what I would call a healing. I wouldn't want to discourage myself if I were to look and not yet see the evidence of the correction I felt in my thought. It might throw me off . . . But I can't seem to resist!--I LOOK--and what do I see?

No change from before. 

However, in a moment of self-surprise, I realize I am not discouraged. I have prayed. I have known the truth. The healing is imminent. I am going to stop looking at the table and just get on with my work . . . 

But I just know it's been healed!! So I look at the table again before no more than five minutes has passed--and what do I see?

One table.
ZERO ants.

Where there had been a steady stream up and down one of the table legs (down and UP, mind you), there are none. I look closer and see evidence on the wood that insects have invaded, but I see no insects.

I'm almost in disbelief, but I know better. This really just happened. Because that's how Christian Science works.

Looking back on this, I can see it was (yet another) Psalm 23 kind of experience.  I'm sure you'd agree . . .

The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.

He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.

He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake.

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death [limitation], I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.

Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies; thou annointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.

Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.

All finished on the deck, ready to bring them in

In their new home

Traffic and Travel Turmoil Evaporated!

Just a couple days ago, I was returning home after visiting my grandma, who lives about six hours from where I do. I had hoped to get an early start because afternoon traffic where I live can be a bit hectic, and I really didn't want to be mixed up in it. However, as I approached the final leg of the trip, it appeared I would be arriving right smack dab in the middle of rush hour.

I called my dad to let him know, since he would be helping me unload something when I got home, and he recommended an alternate route, the one he normally took. I thanked him and told him I would think about that option. What I meant was that I would pray, listen for God's guidance, to see whether that was indeed the best option.

However, despite my best intentions, I never actually made the effort to quiet my thought. And I certainly didn't feel the calm I knew came along with listening for and hearing God's inspiration. Instead, after filling up with gas, I somewhat willfully decided to take my dad's advice and charged ahead into unfamiliar territory, with the GPS as my back-up guide.

At first I wasn't too happy about all the traffic lights--since there would have been basically none on the route I usually took--but the GPS said I'd be getting home a half an hour earlier than I had planned, so I stuck with it. Then, at probably the sixth or seventh red light, as I looked at the GPS, I realized that it wasn't set for daylight savings time...so I would actually be getting home half an hour later than if I had taken the other route.

That's when things got unpleasant. I felt so trapped! I was too far from my normal route for it to make any sense to backtrack. And I had no idea how many more traffic lights I was going to be in for! I blamed myself. I blamed my dad. I blamed my sweet grandma who I just couldn't stand to leave any earlier than I had.

Then I saw a sign for a landmark I normally passed and abruptly decided to head that way. Now, this road was gorgeous--rural and curvy, with all kinds of pretty scenery. Exactly the type I like to drive on. But I was so concerned about making good time, that instead of enjoying it, all I could think about was the guy in front of me driving below the speed limit, and how irritating it was that I never had the opportunity to pass him.

So, because I've made it a practice to recognize these negative types of thought as mistaken views of what's really going on, during this whole time, underneath the loud, irritated thoughts, my heart was quietly reaching out to God, knowing that I didn't have to indulge the negative thoughts. Not only did they make no sense (like blaming my dad because he suggested the route), but, in fact, they actually weren't my thoughts at all, because they were not how God was viewing the situation, and all my thoughts had to come from Him. I recognized this, but I wasn't yet seeing it in my experience.

And that's when Paul Simon started singing.

You know how couples sometimes have a song? Or friends have special songs to commemorate special events? Well, God and I have a song, and it's "Father and Daughter" by Paul Simon. The first words essentially say, if you wake up in the middle of a bad dream, and for a second can't remember where you are. My thought became very quiet. I was humbled. I said aloud, "This is exactly like a bad dream." And I realized that I had forgotten where I was--I was right in God's care, in His presence, because He, Spirit, was everywhere. And for the first time in the experience, I was ready to hear what God had to say, to see the harmony He was seeing. No sooner had my thought changed that way, than I came upon the road I normally took, just from the opposite direction. So from then on, I followed my normal route, and didn't even encounter any back-ups where I had anticipated them--AND I actually arrived home at the same time I'd originally predicted!

It was almost as if the whole unpleasant incident had been erased. In fact, it had--the unpleasant part--but I definitely gained some deeper insights into the way God and man relate to one another:

One was that we always need to follow our spiritual gut, i.e., our spiritual intuition about what's best to do, even in a seemingly non-life-changing event. As I looked back, I realized it had felt right all along to go the normal way. So all along, God was telling me what to do--I just wasn't listening!

Which leads into the next insight--God is always guiding us. The ideas we need--the right thoughts and right feelings, the practical guidance--are always knocking at the door of our thought, so to speak. But if we let the volume of a mental complaint stereo get cranked up too high, we can't hear the knock at the door. I had certainly proven that.

Now, those were both things I'd essentially already known. But the third insight was new to me. As it turned out, I had been thinking that I was responsible for my thought. That it was up to me to make the situation better by listening to God. But God is always in charge. Not only is He our divine Parent, our Father who shelters and cares for us like the dad in the Paul Simon song, but He is divine Love itself. Because Love is perfect, He has already seen to every need we have, meeting it perfectly.

And here's where I'll mention something I didn't earlier. That Paul Simon song was one of 383 songs in a playlist on my iPod, and I had it on shuffle. I had no way of knowing when that song would come up. But it did come up, not just at the moment that I needed it, but at the moment that I was ready to benefit from its message. I didn't do that. God did. So He not only sent me the thought and feeling I needed, but did it in such a way that it broke through the hypnotism of the negative thoughts. They simply evaporated when the sense of God's deep and special love for me came to consciousness. It's something so precious that my words don't really do it justice. But it's something that you and I always have the opportunity to prove.

God, Love, is always in the details of our lives. We are always with Him.

Can any hide himself in secret places that I shall not see him? saith the Lord. Do not I fill heaven and earth? saith the Lord. --Jeremiah 23:24