Wanting to know why is a characteristic that has brought great progress to humanity. It is behind many useful inventions and discoveries. So when I spoke to a group of young people about the nature of God, it was only natural that they wanted to know why. Why, if God is all-good, do bad things happen? Where does evil come from? And why, if God is Spirit and Spirit is the basic substance of being, do people and things seem material instead of spiritual?
These aren't new questions—many people have pondered them over the centuries. Mary Baker Eddy, a 19th-century religious thinker and writer, was a woman who also had questions about God, health, human existence; and she searched diligently for answers. After being healed of the effects of a serious accident, she wanted to know how this wonderful thing—this healing—had happened. The doctor had given up on her, yet she was healed while reading and pondering a Biblical account of one of the healings of Jesus. So why and how had she been healed? And what did her healing say about the nature of reality?
What she discovered from reading the Bible was what became a basic truth to her: namely, that everything God made really is very good, and that an understanding of this statement enables one to heal as Jesus did. And she wrote Science and Health in order to help others heal also.
