The Unreality Of Evil

Mrs. Eddy has indicated that “the cardinal point of the difference” between Christian Science and other systems is this: “That by knowing the unreality of disease, sin, and death, you demonstrate the Allness of God” (Unity of Good, p. 12). The denial of the reality of evil is supported by the simple logic that it has no origin in God, who is the only cause and creator. Since God made all that was made, and it was good, evil is no part of the divine creation. The practical confirmation of this teaching is in the results that follow its consistent application. Every healing, every reformation, every spiritual transformation that has come through the work of Christian Science, has come in demonstration of this simple statement of the truth.

The logic of this position is so obvious as to be self-evident. No thinking person believes that God made or makes evil, yet, What or whence is evil? is an age-long, world-wide problem. The experiences of mortal existence urge an aggressive testimony that it is here; and the Bible is full of the story of the evil that seemingly had to be encountered by those who loved and trusted the good. In the face of all this, how are we consistently to believe that evil is unreal?

To our human sense there is such a long interval between the conditions of mortal experience,—its perils and privations, its vexations and disasters, its iniquities and wrongs, on the one hand, and the divine ideal of perfection as the only reality on the other,—that it should not be an unexpected thing if the objection is raised that “it is a condition which confronts us—not a theory;” but this is just what Christian Science frankly acknowledges. It teaches and insists that evil is not an entity, but a condition, and a negative condition; that its whole foundation is a false belief, and that thus it is unreal.

Furthermore, Christian Science shows clearly how the whole teaching of the Bible converges upon this one point; how, as men came to realize the power and presence of God, evil was overcome and dissipated, as a thing powerless and unreal. In thus demonstrating the all-power of good, the allness of God, Jesus destroyed the belief in any power or presence of evil, and so not only destroyed “the works of the devil,” but likewise destroyed “him that had the power of death, that is, the devil.” Paul says of Christ Jesus that he “hath abolished death, and hath brought life and immortality to light through the gospel.”

The manifestation of evil is only the working out of a belief and a false belief, but it is a fundamental law of thought that whatever is accepted as an unquestioned belief has to the human sense all the semblance and seeming of a reality, until the belief is disproven. “According to your faith” in good, or according to your belief in matter and evil, will the measuring unto you always be determined. Between mortal sense and the radiant reality of the divine creation there has interposed the belief in matter and evil, and this belief with the results which it imposes is what Isaiah calls “the covering cast over all people, and the vail that is spread over all nations;” but this “vail is done away in Christ.”

If we turn to the early records in Genesis, we find that in the introduction of evil upon the sense, its unreality is implied at the outset. The opening chapter of Genesis is the account of a finished, perfect creation, wherein was nothing but good. In the second chapter there is an account which is generally acknowledged to be purely allegorical in its form, but the statements of which set forth the primal elements of the human problem. This account brings upon the scene a man and woman, to whom there comes a temptation whose essence is to enter into the knowledge of good and evil. But, according to the record, this man and woman were brought forth in the midst of a creation where all was good; how, then, was it possible for them to know evil, where there was no evil to know? Is it not the evident, necessary intention of the narrative that we shall understand that the knowing of evil was what procured the evil? and that the way, the only way, to be rid of the evil is to unknow it? In other words, this so-called knowledge is false knowledge; not really knowledge, but a belief which the truth destroys. The whole teaching of the Bible is simply given to show what is the truth that destroys error, and how evil must give way to good.

In its practical bearing, this statement of the unreality of evil seems, at first impression, to fly in the face of all our previous experience. In the round of affairs that makes up the sum of earthly existence, evil, at times, seems even more real and aggressive than good. Confronting all of this, to ask one to believe that evil is unreal, essentially non-existent, seems at first like contradicting and denying the most obvious facts of existence, and yet, in the common round of human affairs there is much that goes to indicate and illustrate how evil is without any rational cause, origin, or existence.

For instance, let it be supposed that a schoolboy is to find the sum of eight and seven, and he assumes it to be thirteen. We know that the sum of eight and seven is not, never was, and never will be thirteen. This is obviously a false belief,—it represents an unreality. This error does not inhere in any mathematical principle or law, is no part of mathematics, nor is it a product of the boy’s mathematical sense. The boy has the sense to perceive that “the whole is greater than any of its parts,” and that “the whole is equal to the sum of all its parts,” or he would not have proceeded to the conclusion that he did. But the mathematical faculty that was capable of grasping these two axioms was equally capable of applying them; in other words, the error was no inherent part of the mathematical equipment of the boy, but a failure to utilize that equipment,—a negation.

Such a mistake in other relations might entail grievous results. If it were the error of some accountant, it might involve a loss of thousands of dollars if not discovered and corrected; and what would it all be but a mistake working out its own results. Or, suppose it to be the error of some architect or engineer who is computing the elements that must enter into some great structure. Such a mistake might involve a structural weakness that would some day bring calamity and disaster in human experience; yet what would it be but a mistake builded on a mistake.

And now we need to note again, that such an error is not a part of the mathematical law and order of God’s creation, nor is it a product of any one’s mathematical sense. The failure of the accountant, of the engineer, properly and adequately to exercise his own mathematical sense, means at that particular point a negative condition of that sense, a lack of its due expression; a sense of its lack, when it is not lacking; and so in its place there intervenes a false sense which brings and is the trouble. But this false sense is always a false belief, an unnecessary, unreal thing.

Or we may take another illustration from human conditions, one that comes into more vital meanings, an illustration intended to show how a false belief may work untold evil, and yet be based entirely on a supposition that is at bottom a negation. Here, we will say, are two wedded hearts and lives, pledged in lasting fidelity and affection. All is well until there comes a time when on the part of one there is a failure to give the wonted attention, the wonted expressions of kindness and affection. This may be simply through care, preoccupation, neglect. It is purely a negation, a failure to express what is really there. Presently the other begins to wonder what this means, and doubts arise. Doubt brings suspicion, suspicion breeds jealousy; and when jealousy has come we know exactly what will occur. Nothing that the other may do will be seen aright; to the jealous sense all will be reversed. The jealous thought will seem to find a confirmation of its worst fears.

Shakespeare, that wise commentator on human frailties, makes Iago say,—

Trifles light as air
Are to the jealous confirmations strong
As proofs on holy writ;

and more than one of his dramas is founded upon some such experience as this,—an experience which every one knows is, in some guise, being repeated day after day. Now, when such a condition has wrought its worst, when it seems that the hopes of two lives have been blasted and a home has been wrecked, if you go to these two, tell them this is all a mistake, a needless, false belief, it will seem to them that you mock at their calamity; but let the situation be seen as it really is, turn the light of truth in upon it, and all the discord, dissension, division will vanish like the baseless fabric of a dream. So let the light of eternal Truth, the light that was reflected “in the face of Jesus Christ,” shine into the innermost depths of human consciousness, and all the evil will vanish, like the dream that it is, and “leave not a rack behind.”

Any reasoning we can do, any illustration we may find or bring, can only at most do this: it may help to dissipate the insistent feeling that we are doing an irrational thing in denying the reality of evil. That which brings abundant proof and produces vital conviction are the practical results which appear in applying the truth that is behind all this. In the awakened sense of the presence and omnipresence of God, there comes the conviction that in this omnipresence of good evil can have no place. Then, laying hold of the loving sufficiency of our God, steadfastly adhering to the reality and allness of good, and denying any reality to evil, we see the evil sense—be it sin, sickness, or death—disappear, and the divine allness stands revealed.

Christian Scientists are at the threshold of their demonstration. They prove the unreality of evil just in proportion to their growth in the understanding of Truth; but every demonstration made in the work of Christian Science is made upon this basis, that every release it has ever brought from sickness, sorrow, or sin has come through declaring and demonstrating the nothingness of evil, the allness of God.