What A Good Beginning the Bible announces ! "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. . . . And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good." Gen. 1:1,31 But what about evil? How does one explain it? "The origin of evil is the problem of ages. It confronts each generation anew," writes Mary Baker Eddy. "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. This belief is a species of idolatry, and is not more true or real than that an image graven on wood or stone is God." Miscellaneous Writings, p. 346
At this point someone might ask, "If this is so, how do I respond when evil seems to be going on around me?" What Jesus did in his healing work offers a powerful answer to this question: he impersonalized evil. That is, he dealt with evil not as a person or a thing but as a falsehood to be rejected, and this was an important aspect of his healing method. For example, when a lunatic boy was brought to the Master, Matthew reports, "Jesus rebuked the devil; and he departed out of him." Matt. 17:18 Luke records the healing of Peter's mother-in-law by the Master: "And he stood over her, and rebuked the fever; and it left her." Luke 4:39 The rebuke was not directed to the person, but to the impersonal belief that evil is real and powerful, that it can govern some individual and make him embody evil.
