The Bible, recording mankind's progress in understanding God, assures us that He is Love, the only creator and the creator of good alone. Throughout its pages, divine Truth thus asserts itself. Crying out for evidence of God's justice, the prophet Habakkuk says, "Thou [God] art of purer eyes than to behold evil, and canst not look on iniquity."Hab. 1:13. And in the New Testament an epistle of John declares, "God is light, and in him is no darkness at all."I John 1:5.
It was obvious to me as a young Christian Scientist that such truths left absolutely no place for anything unlike God and that therefore evil, matter, and disease could not possibly be real. It was also becoming increasingly evident to me that the realization of Truth heals. Yet, oh how I puzzled over the question "But why do ungodlike qualities and conditions seem real?" And how frustrated I was to have more experienced Christian Scientists respond with words that obviously solved the issue for them yet meant little to me!
Hearing how others had settled this question for themselves was giving me food for thought. But gradually I realized that the understanding and peace I was seeking must necessarily come in degrees through divinely guided reasoning and inspiration, through an increasing understanding of the allness of God—not just through listening to words. Therefore I set my question aside, and during the next several years as I grew spiritually, I found that the question ceased coming to thought. I came to feel as little impelled to explain why materiality seems real to human thought as I was to explain why two plus two may seem to equal three to someone in the early stages of learning arithmetic. As I faithfully started my reasoning with the truth of God and man, error seemed less and less real to me. Who wants to know why something "seems" to be when it doesn't seem to be! It was a glorious freeing.
