Article November 21, 1953 Issue

OVERCOMING THE TEMPTATION TO BELIEVE IN EVIL

ALBERT G. SOMERS

It is significant that in the beginning of his ministry of healing Jesus was led into the wilderness and was tempted of the devil forty days. We read (Luke 4:5), "And the devil, taking him up into an high mountain, shewed unto him all the kingdoms of the world." Here the temptation was presented to Jesus to believe in the reality of a material kingdom and its supposed power and glory. Our Master met and conquered all these temptations and answered the tempter with the words, "Get thee behind me, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve."

In Christian Science one learns that evil is a supposition rather than a reality or fact. It is a misstatement of God's true creation. The temptation to believe in such misstatements has been the source of mankind's apparent ills, disappointments, and inharmonious conditions. Even the manifestations of so-called matter are nothing but the objectification of false beliefs. Christian Science states that temptations to believe in sin, illness, and inharmony have been and can be overcome when we learn their unreality. These false beliefs are only as real as the believer makes them.

When tempted to accept evil as real, individuals sometimes like to console themselves with the thought that Biblical history records many instances of men faced with temptations of all kinds. But when one is confronted with temptations, accepting them as real and rejecting them as unreal are two different processes, and the individual's acceptance or rejection of temptation determines his status of slavery or freedom.

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