While sitting in a bakery the other day, I saw a flyer advertising a program to raise awareness of bullying.  It’s something that we need to be alert to and not tolerate given the tragic deaths of several teens over the past few years.

Yet there’s another kind of bullying that’s often overlooked.  It’s the type that takes place in our mental landscapes.  It’s the kind that often comes across as our own thinking.

It’s the suggestions of error—of evil—that would either attempt to intimidate us from spiritually progressing, or that would have us play the role of mentally bullying others by hating or resenting them.

If we buy into either—being bullied or becoming the bully—we are working against ourselves.  And ultimately the effect is one and the same—to keep us from being healed and from healing others.

Perhaps the bullying takes the form of doubt, frolicking about in the guise that we can’t or don’t deserve to be healed—that we’ve done something wrong and need to be punished, that we’re incapable of seeing the truth that would free us, or that we’re just not worthy to feel God’s love.  Or on the other side of the coin, we may feel wronged and want others to pay for what we perceive to be their transgressions.

But whatever the mode of aggressive bullying that’s trying to inhabit our consciousness, we don’t have to acquiesce to it.  We’re not victims or victimizers.  We’re nothing less than the expression—the reflection—of Almighty God!

And we’ve been given the spiritual authority and power—even the mandate—to refute, rebuke, and destroy bullying in whatever form it parades around in.

Mary Baker Eddy penned the following (Science and Health, p. 393):

Rise in the strength of Spirit to resist all that is unlike good. God has made man capable of this, and nothing can vitiate the ability and power divinely bestowed on man.

And the Apostle James wrote:

Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. (James 4:7)

So go ahead and take up your God-endowed spiritual arms against the bullying suggestions of error.  Don’t stand for it a moment longer.  Send error scurrying to its native nothingness!