Christian Science approaches the whole problem of sin with fresh insight. It shows what sin is by revealing what it is not. Sin is not an element of God's infinite, ever-present perfection. This eternal fact—the allness of God—exposes sin for what it is. It is a lie about God's creation. It is the supposition that somehow man has fallen away from God's ever-present goodness. It is the erring belief that at some point man was separated from God's perfection and that some measure of that separation continues for all of us.
But to accept a separation from God is to sacrifice God's allness, and in truth that cannot be done. It is done only in erring, mortal belief. An individual may believe himself to exist apart from God. But the fact remains that man is eternally at one with God. He is the genuine expression of God, Soul. The one Father-Mother forever sustains man's purity. Every thought or deed unlike God is sin. That is, it perpetuates the erring assumption that man has fallen from perfection. And sooner or later that false assumption grows uncomfortable.
Everyone has the deep-rooted, inherent desire to express his true, spiritually whole nature as the perfect child of God. As the individual begins to awake to this desire, he seeks to turn away from sin—from that sense of separation. As society begins to awake, it too seeks ways to help itself turn away from sin. Traditionally the effort to turn away from what is ungodlike, fundamentally false, has rested on a very tenuous basis. The individual may try to be better. He may try hard. He may even exert a great deal of human will and determination to avoid what he is beginning to recognize as sinful, wrong, because it supposes the absence of God.
