Editorial December 10, 1979 Issue

The powerlessness of suggestion

NATHAN A. TALBOT

The quickness with which we heal may well depend on how clearly we understand that evil is a suggestion rather than a fact.

Do we ever allow ourselves to drift into an acceptance that evil has actually become a fact—a real part of our life? And then do we set out to overcome that "fact" with the truth of being? But the truth of being is that evil never has become an established reality. It cannot reach the point of becoming a concrete part of our identity. Evil, in whatever guise it appears, never has been and never will be more to us than an offer, a suggestion. And suggestion is powerless to govern us because God alone governs man.

We should guard against slipping into the misconception that the tools Christian Science gives us are for coping with an actual entrenched evil in our life. A condition described as chronic disease, for instance, does not become attached to an individual; it never develops as part of his God-ordained being—the only being any of us can ever have.

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