Resistance to Evil

Duncan Sinclair

The problem of evil is continually presenting itself to the children of men. In some form or other the belief of evil is constantly confronting them. At one time it is sickness they have to contend with; at another it is one of the many phases of sin. During the entire period of what goes by the name of human existence, the human race is faced by the problem of so-called evil; and men either overcome its temptations or go down before their sinister influence.

While evil seems as rampant in the world to-day as ever, the problem has assumed an entirely different aspect since Mrs. Eddy's discovery of Christian Science. She perceived with marvelously clear spiritual vision that God is perfect and infinite; and she rightly concluded that good is limitless, or, in other words, that good exists without a real opposite. This amounted to the discovery that evil, which is the opposite of good, has only a fabulous existence, or, simply, that evil is unreal. The importance of the discovery has never been paralleled in the history of the world. Age after age had seen mankind groping in the dark in the vain attempt to discover the origin of evil, and so account for its seeming activity; but all to no avail. To attribute it to God was to deny that God is wholly good; to believe that it was the creation of a being other than God was to assume that God is not omnipotent,—both untenable positions, if God be, as He in reality is, the infinite and perfect divine Principle. Mrs. Eddy was obedient to the logical deduction which she drew from the spiritual facts, and with courage unsurpassed, declared to a skeptical world the truth that evil is unreal. And so, that is how evil is regarded in Christian Science. Being unreal, evil possesses neither actual presence, power, nor identity. It is a dream-shadow, a passing illusion of material sense, a mere negation.

But to mankind, even when to some extent it is enlightened by Christian Science, the belief of evil still presents itself, and sometimes apparently in formidable enough shape. For example, who among men is not confronted at times with the temptations of anger, jealousy, envy, hatred, malice, or some other of the lusts of the flesh? Indeed, until the last trace of the belief that matter or evil exists as reality has been destroyed, evil will seem to assert itself as temptation. At the present stage in the history of mankind it often seems very formidable; and all are confronted with the problem of how best to handle, practically, the belief. The Apostle James, after telling his hearers to submit themselves to God, advises them in the words, "Resist the devil, and he will flee from you." Notice the word "resist." Many have taken this to mean that the person tempted by evil should oppose it by force of will. But how futile this has been proved to be times without number, the reason being that will-power, itself the offspring of material sense or the carnal mind, cannot destroy that which is identical with the carnal mind—evil. Resistance to evil, then, must be something very different from a display of will-power.

Mrs. Eddy illumines the whole position in a single paragraph in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 218). "Treat a belief in sickness as you would sin, with sudden dismissal," she says. And in the very next sentence she gives the method of the dismissal, explaining the metaphysical meaning of "resistance." Her words are, "Resist the temptation to believe in matter as intelligent, as having sensation or power." It is perfectly plain. Evil in whatever form it may present itself can be scientifically met and overcome by refusing to believe, and so rejecting, the lie that matter has either intelligence, sensation, or power. Suppose, for example, that some one is a slave to a sinful appetite, or to a base passion, which is rendering him sick of body or mind. Is he not believing that matter has sensation? Is he not the slave of this sensuousness? Is he not believing that matter has power to bind him or to keep him enslaved, and also that matter has intelligence to exercise its power to enslave? But matter has neither intelligence, sensation, nor power, since God, Spirit, has all intelligence and power, and since spiritual sense alone is real. Let the sufferer perceive and realize the truth, and he will be freed from the thralldom of supposititious evil.

Peter also advises resistance to evil, as did his fellow disciple James. After referring to "your adversary the devil," which, "as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour," he says, "whom resist stedfast in the faith." Not by ignoring evil will it ever be overcome. Evil can be successfully met and vanquished only through the scientific understanding of its utter unreality. In a passage in Science and Health (p. 406) which is brimful of hope for all who are in any degree the victims of sin, Mrs. Eddy writes: "Resist evil—error of every sort—and it will flee from you. Error is opposed to Life. We can, and ultimately shall, so rise as to avail ourselves in every direction of the supremacy of Truth over error, Life over death, and good over evil, and this growth will go on until we arrive at the fulness of God's idea, and no more fear that we shall be sick and die." With the destruction of all belief in the reality of matter or evil, sickness, sin, and death will have entirely disappeared.

Duncan Sinclair.

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