What is the Origin of Evil?

DR. CURT GENTSCH

The adherents of the teachings of Christian Science are frequently called upon to answer the following question: If all that God created is good, whence cometh the evil of this world; how can God be ignorant of evil, when evil confronts us at every step? Such inquirers fail to realize that our human standards and personal concepts do not apply to Deity; that God, according to the teachings of Christian Science, is the divine Principle of good. Transferred into the realm of mathematics, the question might be: If the multiplication table is at all times correct and admits of no mistake, whence come all the miscalculations which we observe daily? The answer must of necessity be: The multiplication table is indeed correct and true at all times, and this despite the innumerable miscalculations which are taking place in human thought. The mistake originates when an erring mortal fails to apply the truth relative to multiplication in a specific case, when he thinks contrary to the basic law of mathematics and acts according to this erroneous concept.

The question as to evil and its supposed relation to good may be answered in the same way. In God, the essence of good, there can be no consciousness of evil. If man, God's likeness, reflects that which is divinely good in a perfect way, as did Jesus, then evil can have no existence for him, since he and his Father are one. In the ratio, therefore, in which, mortal man fails to reflect God and fails to avail himself of the Principle of good, will the belief in evil be manifested by him, though (and this is the important point) not through the eternal Principle of truth, and not as a reality, but as error bearing the characteristics of perishableness, of unreality.

If the human sense has so strayed from good as to reflect but darkly the divine image, and error consequently seems to hold sway in one's consciousness, this darkened mental state is apparent to the individual whose thought is more attuned to God; and thus Jesus perceived and rebuked evil in the thought of the Pharisees. But the Principle of good has nothing to do with the counterfeit, with the erroneous, the false concept entertained by the sinner, even as light has nothing to do with darkness. It has no cognizance of such error, for it knows only good, in the same way as the multiplication table or the principle of mathematics knows no mistakes, even though these may cause men a great deal of suffering before they are destroyed. The remedy is that offered in the book of Job, "Acquaint now thyself with him [God], and be at peace: thereby good shall come unto thee."

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