PERHAPS no question has been asked more often during the centuries than this one: "Where did evil come from?" The fact that the question continues to be asked indicates belief in the reality of evil.
Christian Science is making a great contribution to humanity by scientifically exposing evil's deceptive nature and showing how to bring its false claims to naught. Mrs. Eddy writes in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 207), "We must learn that evil is the awful deception and unreality of existence." As the truth of this statement is grasped, mankind will achieve their freedom from evil, from sin, disease, frustration, injustice, death. Every claim of evil is deception, and to try to find the origin of deception is to be deceived at the very outset.
Not only does Christian Science declare evil to be unreal, but it shows why this is so. It also teaches how to overcome evil's false claims with the truth that good alone is real, that infinite good exists without an opposite.
Armed with the assurance of evil's unreality, we are able to demonstrate by degrees that evil is not the powerful influence that people have been falsely educated to believe it is. As we understand that evil's every claim to reality and power is false, we can prove for ourselves that good only is real; that good is the demonstrable fact of being; that man is the expression of good and of only that which is good. Learning what is true of good—its allness —we learn what is true of evil—its nothingness.
In the face of mankind's experience, of course, evil seems to be not only real but subtle and powerful as well. And the unfortunate part of it is that as long as people are deceived into believing that evil possesses these qualities, their experience will confirm their belief, and evil will seem to have the reality and power they erroneously ascribe to it. It is not evil, then, that we must overcome so much as our belief in evil, the belief that makes real to us what is actually unreal.
The first mention of evil in the Bible is to be found in the allegorical record of creation, including the story of the serpent (see Genesis, second and third chapters). When regarded as included in an allegory rather than in a historical account, the evil suggestions of the talking serpent are exposed as having not a shred of truth in them. Rightly viewed, this mythological record of creation exposes the illusive nature of evil. When this is understood, the entire history of evil will be seen to be merely the history of mankind's belief in the reality of that which has no possible existence. Through Christian Science, human thought successfully deals with evil because it deals with evil as the deception that it really is.
The question which serves as the title of this editorial, "Where did evil come from?" is sometimes put in this way: "If good is all, how do you account for evil?" A satisfying answer to this question is to be found in the book of Job where, in a supposed dialogue between the Lord and Satan, evil's deceptive claims are exposed as having no validity whatever.
The writer of this spiritually perceptive book shows in such words as these how evil seems to insinuate itself into human thought (2:1, 2): "There was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan came also among them to present himself before the Lord. And the Lord said unto Satan, From whence comest thou? And Satan answered the Lord, and said, From going to and fro in the earth, and from walking up and down in it." This answer exposes the fact that evil has no source, no abiding place, no kingdom, no power.
A vagrant by its own admission, evil, the perverter of good, constantly claims to be superior to good. From this standpoint, wherever good is, evil seems to be present also; and whatever good is doing, evil claims to reverse it. Christ Jesus referred to the devil as "a liar, and the father of it" (John 8:44).
Take a few simple illustrations: Science declares that man is the image and likeness of God. Satan, the perverter, points to Adam as evidence of man's sinful nature. Christian Science declares that the divine government holds man in his original state of perfection. Animal magnetism, the Christianly scientific term for the action of error, points to its own inherently corrupt nature and attributes it to man. What Science declares is demonstrably true, animal magnetism suggests is wholly false.
Paul stated (I Cor. 10:26), "The earth is the Lord's, and the fulness thereof." But where God's government is supreme —right on earth—evil would repudiate this fact and suggest that its own power is supreme. Because the unreal is but a false conception of the real, we must have a true concept of the real before we can unmask the illusion of evil and overcome it. We must know that good is omnipotent and never shares its kingdom with evil, never submits to evil. Then we shall be armed with the truth and be prepared to deal with evil as we would with any falsity, seeing it for the lie it is.
Mrs. Eddy succinctly answers the question under discussion in this way (Miscellaneous Writings, p. 346):
"The origin of evil is the problem of ages. It confronts each generation anew. It confronts Christian Science. The question is often asked, If God created only the good, whence comes the evil?
"To this question Christian Science replies: Evil never did exist as an entity. It is but a belief that there is an opposite intelligence to God."
Then in the next paragraph she adds, "This leading, self-evident proposition of Christian Science, that, good being real, its opposite is necessarily unreal, needs to be grasped in all its divine requirements."
