Goodness is the only real protection from the world's evil. Where love of God, good, impels our thoughts and action, we open the way for protection beyond the ability of fallible material means to bestow. Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, writes in "The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany" (p. 210), "Good thoughts are an impervious armor; clad therewith you are completely shielded from the attacks of error of every sort."
In Old Testament times the city of Sodom, devoid of moral worth, was without divine protection. It was only the good which Lot embodied that saved him and his family from being destroyed with the rest in that wicked city.
In the eighteenth chapter of Genesis it is related that when Abraham learned of the impending doom of Sodom, he pleaded with the Lord and said (verse 23), "Wilt thou also destroy the righteous with the wicked?" The Lord assured him that if there were but fifty righteous in the city, it would be spared; and then, upon Abraham's repeated insistence, he promised that even for the sake of ten righteous men the city would be spared. But as it turned out, there were not even ten. So, after Lot and his family fled, the city was burned. There was not enough good in Sodom to save it, and evil, in effect, destroyed itself.
