Editorial March 17, 1980 Issue

Evil reiterated is not evil validated

GEOFFREY J. BARRATT

Propagandists and advertisers know that the way to get a message to stick is to repeat it and repeat it. Evil would achieve its destructive aims by utilizing the same method. But evil reiterated is not evil validated.

Aping Truth's perpetual expression of itself, error would present itself again and again. But no matter how often its arguments are recycled, no matter how much some details of its form may be varied, it is still the same base metal, a lie. Evil does not come more alive through repetition but drearier and drearier. And when we face error with the truth of being it is doomed; then, even if it should seem to spin faster, it is merely being accelerated into self-destruction.

We may believe what evil has told us each day for the last two years: for example, that there is something wrong with man, therefore something wrong with us, and we're ill. Or that there is something gravely amiss with our church, the outward symbol of Church as the divine idea of Life and Truth. And we may be tempted to believe that mortal mind's restatements somehow reinforce their claims to truth. Yet, this conclusion runs counter not only to human logic but to divine logic, in which whatever is nothing remains nothing, and whatever is a lie remains a lie. Whatever is the truth—immortal Truth and its expression—remains true. A nullity doesn't gain reality through restatement. Error doesn't become truth through replaying its bogus arguments. Mortal lies don't gain authenticity by appearing yet once more. No matter how often we replay a recording, it still is the same music. No matter how often mortal mind replays its phony suggestions, it is still the same nonentity.

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