"Since God is All, why is there so much suffering in the world?"
This question, which teen-agers in the Christian Science Sunday School often ask, gives the teacher an opportunity to help his pupils grasp an important point— that they need to be healers as well as thinkers.
The dialogue below is based on actual conversations that have taken place in my college-age class. The pupils' names, however, are fictitious.
Teacher: All right, how about this for an opening move? The suffering you ask about is an illusion. It's basically unreal. That's why Christ Jesus was able to heal it, and that's why Christian Science is able to heal it.
Anita: That's no answer. All it does is change the question. You're saying that evil is unreal because God's allness prevents it from ever becoming actual, so that the most evil can do is appear to exist. Right?
T: Right.
Anita: But why isn't God's allness just as much of an obstacle to the seeming existence of evil as it is to its actual existence? Our question now is: "Since God is All, why does there seem to be so much suffering in the world?"
Bruce: All we have so far is a question. Where do we go from here?
T: This week's Lesson-SermonIn the Christian Science Quarterly; has some great passages. Try what Mrs. Eddy says on page 287 of Science and Health. Read it aloud, somebody, lines 13-16.
Carol: "God being everywhere and all-inclusive, how can He be absent or suggest the absence of omnipresence and omnipotence? How can there be more than all?"
T: You know, for some people this issue we are discussing is nothing more than an intellectual game. But if you really care about helping people in trouble, and if you are ready to mean it when you say God is All—mean it without reservation—then you are ready for a beautiful book.
Anita: What book?
T: Mrs. Eddy's Unity of Good. This question we are puzzling over has been surrounded by fog for centuries, but Unity of Good slices right through the fog.
Carol: But we would still like—from you —a plain, straightforward explanation of how evil can seem to exist in spite of God's allness.
T: I haven't got one.
Carol: Why not?
T: Because I think there are better things to do with evil than explain it.
Bruce: Like what?
T: Like destroy it.
Carol: Why not do both?
David: Right! Why are you so reluctant to attempt an explanation?
T: Well, for one thing, if you try to explain evil you will be forced to choose between two unacceptable options. Logically, you will have to go one of two ways. First, you can attempt to account for the apparent presence of suffering in human experience by saying that God just isn't big enough to prevent it. That is, you can put limits on God's infinitude. You can say, for example, that although His allness prevents evil from actually existing, it doesn't prevent it from seeming to exist. This way you make room for sin and disease—not as realities, of course, but as illusions.
Carol: But putting limits on God's infinitude is ridiculous.
T: Exactly.
Bruce: I'm not sure I understand the difference between evil as an illusion and evil as a reality.
T: Illusions can be dispelled by prayer.
Elaine: Let's get back to the other option.
T: The other possibility is to take the position that God is All. No qualifications, no reservations. By doing this, you shut out evil completely, both as a reality and an illusion.
Fred: Isn't this a perfectly good position to take? Where's the catch?
T: I'm certain that it is a very good stand to take, but the catch is this: if suffering doesn't exist—either as a reality or an illusion—why make the effort to destroy it? The catch, in other words, is that we might be fooled into thinking that since there is nothing to destroy, not even an illusion, then there is no obligation to make an effort to think right, or live right, or to turn to God in prayer at all.
Bruce: That conclusion won't do. You can't give up integrity or ignore people in trouble.
David: But the real man, God's spiritual image and likeness, is never a victim of evil, so he never needs healing.
Carol: Yes, but we're talking about demonstrating this in human experience.
Fred: So you are saying that there are only two ways to explain the seeming existence of evil and you question both?
T: No, I question part of the second way; the part about affirming God's pure infinitude, I accept. I not only accept it, but I take it to be a requirement. God's unqualified allness is the rock on which Christian Science rests. We honor Him all the way. The unacceptable part of this second option is the conclusion—implied, in strict logic, by God's allness—that since evil can't exist even as an illusion, there is no need to heal people in distress.
Bruce: Then we're stuck. Neither way of answering our question will work.
T: We're not stuck. As we get better at healing, the evil and suffering in human experience will fade away, and the question—how can suffering even seem to exist?—along with it.
David: So instead of explaining evil, we erase it.
T: Yes.
Anita: So, now, where are we?
T: We are right where Jesus' disciples were when he said to them: "Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out devils: freely ye have received, freely give." Matt. 10:8.
Be not conformed to this world: but be ye
transformed by the renewing of your mind,
that ye may prove what is that good, and
acceptable, and perfect, will of God. . . .
Be not overcome of evil,
but overcome evil with good.
Romans 12:2, 21
