People sometimes ask: "How can you say there is a God when there seem to be so many desperate situations in the world—the famines, violence, terrorism, war, disease, and all the rest of it? If there is a God, why doesn't He do something about it?"

Gerald Priestland, a well-known commentator on religious topics in Britain, explored this profound problem in a recent BBC radio series called The Case Against God. Summarizing one side of the question, he commented in an interview about the series: "Maybe one has got God wrong. Maybe he is unutterably terrible and terrifying—not even vindictive but just uncaring. This could be one of the things that the Holocaust says to us: God of Love? Forget it." ^{"God in the dock," Radio Times, October 27–November 2, 1984, p. 16 .}

And yet can we forget all the love we've ever known? Where did such love come from? It would help much more to say quietly to ourselves: "God is Love. Remember it." For there is a God. And God is Love. And God does all the things implicit in being Love—caring, supporting, strengthening, protecting His creation. In fact, God is pouring out love all the time, not because of some human situation, or in spite of it, but because that is what God's nature is. Mary Baker Eddy, who discovered and founded Christian Science, struggled deeply with the question of evil and found its spiritual answer. She writes: "The depth, breadth, height, might, majesty, and glory of infinite Love fill all space. That is enough!" ^{Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 520.}

But how do terrible things happen if God doesn't make them happen or let them happen? Christian Science explains that they come from ignorance of the nature of God and the nature of man in God's likeness, from picturing man as a mortal with a mind of his own, liable to be sinful, uncomprehending, fearful, forgetful, discouraged. They come from making gods of hate and fear and vengefulness, rejecting God and trying to get along without Him, then reproaching Him for the evil wrongly associated with Him.

But does it really help to remember that God is Love when we seem to be the innocent victims of something quite outside our control and the human sense of loss seems irreparable—or when we hear about these things and read about them? Yes, it does help. How? First, remembering that God is Love helps us to know that God has no part in any of these evils, so we have no feeling of reproach toward Him. And this in turn helps us to be able to turn to Him for help with less sense of reservation. And the more people do this habitually, the more evil will be disarmed and evil happenings forestalled.

People who have come through what seem to be harrowing experiences often say that they have gained a much clearer sense of the closeness of ever-present Love, as well as a much deeper understanding of the spiritual qualities of being that can never be lost or destroyed. Other people tell how they have been delivered from what seemed to be imminent disaster by remembering then and there that God is Love, and trusting Him more implicitly to protect them.

Once we were living in a place where violence was widespread, and it seemed quite difficult to keep remembering that God was there, and that God was Love, constantly embracing all of us. Then the time of the annual Christian Science lecture for our community came around, and the lecturer spoke to us very simply about the ever-presence of God. He made the presence of God so palpable that everything suddenly seemed different. He didn't bring God to us. He just reminded us that God was already there, and made us aware of the Father's loving presence.

On the long and rather lonely drive home I realized that during that lecture I had quite forgotten that I was in that place—that geographical location—at all. Or perhaps I should say that I had remembered that God is Love, and that God was there with us. And I resolved never to forget this again.

Mrs. Eddy writes: "Many fancy that our heavenly Father reasons thus: If pain and sorrow were not in My mind, I could not remedy them, and wipe the tears from the eyes of My children." She continues: "God says, I show My pity through divine law, not through human. It is My sympathy with and My knowledge of harmony (not inharmony) which alone enable Me to rebuke, and eventually destroy, every supposition of discord." ^{Unity of Good, p. 18.}

So God doesn't react to human situations. In absolute terms the harmony of being is never disturbed. This is the only real being, and it is completely spiritual. God is good and good alone, and all the good there is. The good things that happen in our own lives give us a small inkling of what Love is doing. This isn't a capricious, anthropomorphic conception of God, but universal, impartial Love, the creative, animating Principle of all existence.

Understanding this Science of being is our main objective; but Science isn't a beautiful irrelevance. It can be progressively demonstrated in human experience, and God is helping us to do this all the time. This was the point Christ Jesus was making when he overcame the temptation in the wilderness at the outset of his ministry. All temptation might be defined in part as a temptation to forget that God is Love. And a wilderness can represent the suggestion of a place where God isn't present.

Jesus had already received the divine blessing "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased." ^{Matt. 3:17.} And now he was faced by three temptations, ^{See Matt. 4:1–11 .} the first two beginning "If thou be the Son of God ..." [emphasis added]. Jesus rejected the temptations decisively. After the final one—a demand to worship the devil, evil—he said, "Get thee hence, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve." The account goes on: "Then the devil leaveth him, and, behold, angels came and ministered unto him."

What was God doing while these temptations were being faced and mastered in the consciousness of Jesus? God didn't devise the temptations or take any part in them. But all the time He was providing the strength and perception Jesus needed to recognize the evil and withstand it. God is sending each one of us His angels all the time, not because of a particular temptation but because that's the kind of thing Love does.

So instead of asking petulantly: "Why doesn't God do something?" we should be asking ourselves: "Why don't I do something? Why don't I trust God more and respond more readily to the angels He sends in the form of intuitions and foresight?" For it is so important to begin to stop terrible things from happening, and not just to be content with mopping up the effects afterward.

Mrs. Eddy writes: "Popular theology makes God tributary to man, coming at human call; whereas the reverse is true in Science. Men must approach God reverently, doing their own work in obedience to divine law, if they would fulfil the intended harmony of being." ^{Un., p. 13.} This is the attitude that gets in first with the right thoughts that determine how situations develop. God doesn't react to human situations, but human situations can always respond to divine Love through a change of human thought and action.

We must see ourselves and others as the beloved sons and daughters of God, and reject every temptation to be the agent for discord or to suffer from it. God works through us when we are willing to do our part, to work for Him and with Him to make His power and love apparent. And because God is Love, others can begin to see and understand better what the "something" is that God is doing all the time for everyone.