Article February 27, 1943 Issue

As reported in a recent issue of...

John M. Dean, Committee on Publication for Tennessee—Memphis

Press-Scimitar

As reported in a recent issue of the Press-Scimitar, a Memphis minister in expounding the evils of forgetfulness said: "Men who go this way become shadows of sanity, fugitives from life. They deny pain and sin and thus allow them to grow by their own neglect and cowardice."

It is impossible to see either logic or courage in vain attempts to dodge the issues of sin and pain by ignoring them, or by regarding them as integral parts of God's creation, while at the same time attempting to destroy God's alleged work by the use of drugs or some other material method.

Surely no one will question John's statement (John 1:3), "All things were made by him [God]; and without him was not any thing made that was made." This unequivocal statement is confirmed throughout the Bible, and notably in the spiritual account of creation as recorded in the first chapter of Genesis. To classify evil as real is to charge God, divine Love, with its authorship. Such an attitude is surely unthinkable and untenable. It must be, then, that a sense of evil obtains only in that false mortal consciousness of which the Preacher said in Ecclesiastes 7:29: "Lo, this only have I found, that God hath made man upright; but they have sought out many inventions." Unless God made evil it was never made, and is therefore unreal because untrue. This is not to say that the awful claims of evil are to be overlooked, but the fact remains that Christian courage instead of cowardly surrender is required to meet and overcome evil. Evil's unreality is proved by its destructibility.

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