Article April 22, 1922 Issue

In reference to the interesting article in a recent issue of...

Sigge Cronstedt—Stockholm, Sweden (translation)

Framtidens Folk

In reference to the interesting article in a recent issue of your paper may I present a few viewpoints in order to state the position of Christian Science as to this question, as, I regret to say, there occurred certain misstatements in the article which might lead to misunderstanding of the teaching of Christian Science regarding the enigma of suffering.

Suppose you should receive world that you had lost all your possessions or that your nearest and dearest friend had passed on. How much sorrow and pain, how much suffering, would it not cause you? Such a shock might even occasion severe bodily sufferings. Then suppose a second message arrives saying the first message had been proved false; that you are not ruined, or that the dear friend is alive. The suffering then disappears. The deliverance from the influence of the lie may not be achieved at once, but by degrees you can be completely delivered because the cause of the suffering is gone. "The angel of his presence saved them," says Isaiah. Jesus used these words: "Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." God, omnipresent and omnipotent Love, cannot send suffering to His children, "for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any man." There is no space, no place, where God, good, is not; neither is there any time when He is not omnipresent. In Him there does not exist anything that is evil; as then His kingdom would be a "kingdom divided against itself," and could not stand. Man lives in, of, and through ever present Love.

About evil—or, personified, the evil one—Jesus said it is a lie from the beginning, and the father of all lies, as the truth is not in it. It is true that we may succumb to the apparent influence and power of a lie. We do not free ourselves from it, however, simply "by denying its fact," as the critic avers, but by replacing the belief in a lie with the understanding of Truth. If we say that we are free from sin and yet sin, this itself is sin, as the Bible points out. We are delivered from sin, disease, and death only by supplanting the carnal mind with the Mind of Christ.

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