Here’s a question that we all need to ask ourselves: “Am I—in any way—accepting the label of being a victim?”

If we’re honest—and we must be if we’re expecting to make spiritual progress—perhaps we’re acquiescing to that claim in some fashion.

What do I mean by that?

Well, are we accepting any assertion of limitation on our experience—be it illness, lack of supply, relationship inharmonies, feelings of oppression, anger, aging, discouragement, etc.—while simultaneously believing that we’ve done everything we could have done, and all to no avail?

If so, then my friends, we’re wearing the garment of victimization and suffering accordingly.

And, let’s face it; if we truly had done all we needed to do, we’d be free. It’s just that simple!

But more and more, I hear from Christian Scientists, who have fallen into this trap of believing that there is a power opposed to God that could actually thwart their ability to be healed, and who thereby have agreed—tacitly or overtly—to take on this insidious victimization mantle. A mantle that has been heavily promoted throughout our society by psychology and psychiatry. A mantle whose adornment allows the person to give excuse to error—whether they’re comfortable or uncomfortable in its lies.

A mantle that God has never, ever placed upon us!

To the contrary, we’ve been given the dominion, power, ability, and authority by Almighty God, whose image and likeness is our true and only identity—an identity that is wholly, immutably, and irrevocably spiritual—to cast off those self-imposed shackles of mortal mind—of the carnal mind!

But to do so requires that we use our God-given spiritual senses of discernment, perception, comprehension, judgment, and vision to be alert to the carnal mind’s claims of an identity separated from God and existing in matter—and vehemently refuse to use its weapons that the Apostle Paul alludes to in his Second Epistle to the Corinthians.

Weapons that include the belief of being a helpless victim.

Weapons that we dare not embrace!

Instead, we need to metaphysically persist in using what Paul states are the spiritual weapons of our warfare—weapons that are:

…mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds; Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ… (II Cor. 10)

Make no mistake: God is leading us out of the wilderness as we strive to bring every thought to the obedience of Christ and recognize that there is only one God—one power—that we are subordinate to: namely, divine Love.

As Mary Baker Eddy wrote:

Citizens of the world, accept the “glorious liberty of the children of God,” and be free! (Science and Health, p. 227)

Go ahead! Cast off that “Scarlet V”!