"According to reason and revelation, evil and matter are negation: for evil signifies the absence of good, God, though God is ever present; and matter claims something besides God, when God is really ALL. Creation, evolution, or manifestation, - being in and of Spirit, Mind, and all that really is, - must be spiritual and mental. This is Science, and is susceptible of proof." - Mary Baker Eddy ************ While Christian Science is premised on the allness and oneness of God, good, hence the unreality of evil, it does not ignore evil, or all phases of discord in individual and collective human experience, but strikes at the root of all evil as the belief in more than one intelligence, or Mind, which leads to another belief in more than one power. It also does not ignore sin in mortal thought or the carnal mind but explains how the belief in, and indulgence in sin, brings about the belief of separation from God, good, our true source of being, and invariably incurs its own penalties, "For to be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace," (Romans 8-6) hence the remedy for overcoming sin, or all evil, is to be spiritually minded or to gain spiritual understanding which is knowing the truth that sets man free. The following statements from the writings of Mary Baker Eddy explain what evil and sin is from the Christian Science perspective: ORIGIN OF EVIL: "Mind is God. The exterminator of error is the great truth that God, good, is the only Mind, and that the supposititious opposite of infinite Mind - called devil or evil - is not Mind, is not Truth, but error, without intelligence or reality. There can be but one Mind, because there is but one God; and if mortals claimed no other Mind and accepted no other, sin would be unknown. We can have but one Mind, if that one is infinite. We bury the sense of infinitude, when we admit that, although God is infinite, evil has a place in this infinity, for evil can have no place, where all space is filled with God." (Science and Health - P. 469) "The origin of evil is the problem of ages. It confronts each generation anew. 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. The mortal admission of the reality of evil perpetuates faith in evil; and the Scriptures declare that 'to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are.' This leading, self-evident proposition of Christian Science, that, good being real, its opposite is necessarily unreal, needs to be grasped in all its divine requirements." (Misc. - P. 346) "The Scriptures name God as good, and the Saxon term for God is also good. From this premise comes the logical conclusion that God is naturally and divinely infinite good. How, then, can this conclusion change, or be changed, to mean that good is evil, or the creator of evil? What can there be besides infinity? Nothing. Therefore the Science of good calls evil NOTHING." (Misc. - P. 26-27) "What appears to mortals from their standpoint to be the necessity for evil, is proven by the law of opposites to be without necessity. Good is the primitive Principle of man; and evil, good's opposite, has no Principle, and is not, and cannot be, the derivative of good. Thus evil is neither primitive nor a derivative, but is suppositional; in other words, a lie that is incapable of proof - therefore, wholly problematical. (Misc. - P. 14) SIN: "A sinner can receive no encouragement from the fact that Science demonstrates the unreality of evil, for the sinner would make a reality of sin, - would make that real which is unreal, and thus heap up 'wrath against the day of wrath.' He is joining in a conspiracy against himself, - against his own awakening to the awful unreality by which he has been deceived." (Science and Health - P. 339) "Only those, who repent of sin and forsake the unreal, can fully understand the unreality of evil." (Science and Health - P. 339) "Lurking error, lust, envy, revenge, malice, or hate will perpetuate or even create the belief in disease. Errors of all sorts tend in this direction." (Science and Health - P. 419) "The sinner has no refuge from sin, except in God, who is his salvation. We must, however, realize God's presence, power, and love, in order to be saved from sin. This realization takes away man's fondness for sin and his pleasure in it; and, lastly, it removes the pain which accrues to him from it. Then follows this, as the finale in Science: The sinner loses his sense of sin, and gains a higher sense of God, in whom there is no sin." (Unity of Good - P. 2) "According to divine laws, sin and suffering are not cancelled by repentance or pardon. Christian Science not only elucidates but demonstrates this verity of being; namely, that mortals suffer from the wrong they commit, whether intentionally or ignorantly; that every effect and amplification of wrong will revert to the wrongdoer, until he pays his full debt to divine law, and the measure he has meted is measured to him again, full, pressed down, and running over." (Misc. - P. 261) "The evil-doer receives no encouragement from my declaration that evil is unreal, when I declare that he must awake from his belief in this awful unreality, repent and forsake it, in order to understand and demonstrate its unreality. Error uncondemned is not nullified. We must condemn the claim of error in every phase in order to prove it false, therefore unreal." (Misc. - P. 14-15) "The Science of Truth annihilates error, deprives evil of all power, and thereby destroys all error, sin, sickness, disease, and death. But the sinner is not sheltered from suffering from sin: he makes a great reality of evil, identifies himself with it, fancies he finds pleasure in it, and will reap what he sows; hence the sinner must endure the effects of his delusion until he awakes from it." (Misc.- P. 14-15) |
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