IN CHRISTIAN SCIENCE I'M DELIGHTED TO HAVE a religious practice that steadily nudges me to grow and develop spiritually. A way of thinking and living that increasingly proves to me the truth of its fundamental theology: that because God is absolutely good and has created everyone and everything in His own perfect likeness, evil—however realistic it seems to be—is no part of God's creation nor a reality of anyone's experience.
Early on, I realized that Christian Science— not just the study of it, but the conscientious practice of it—could lead me to experience the joy, peace, and harmony of heaven, which Jesus so emphatically taught is not some place far off, but within individual human consciousness.
And I soon realized that this practice necessitated an understanding of how to deal with what Jesus referred to as Satan, or the devil—what the Apostle Paul called the carnal mind (see Rom. 8:7), and Mary Baker Eddy also named error or animal magnetism—as much as it did an understanding of the goodness of God and the perfection of His spiritual creation. Anything and everything that smacks of evil—fear, hatred, self-justification, even sickness—comes under the umbrella of animal magnetism and the label unreal. That's an arresting concept with lots of ramifications, and it requires proof of its validity. But you don't have to set up a laboratory to test it.
