IN THE WAKE of last month's failed terrorist attacks in London and Glasgow, concerns have grown over this latest mutation of terror tactics. We were among those deeply thankful that none of three car bombs detonated in very public places. Yet, because those three devices apparently were the work of previously unknown terrorists, and because some of the alleged perpetrators were doctors—people trained not to harm but to aid humanity—there's a heightened need for vigilance and proactive prayer.

These recent incidents revealed more than a mutation in the methods of terrorists. They helped further uncover the very nature and methods of evil. The evil behind any attempt to do harm is not actually a power, a person, a movement, or some dark presence in the world. Evil's only power or realism comes through consent—the consent of evildoers to a seductive, malicious, and self-destructive mentality and behavior; and the consent of the public to fearfulness and withdrawal before malice and moral abandon.

No one today thinks Franklin D. Roosevelt was naive when he took on the gross moral evil of Nazism, in much the same spirit with which he had earlier told Americans mired in an economic depression that the only thing they had to fear was fear itself. Nor should anyone think the pioneering Christian healer Mary Baker Eddy was naive to say: "Evil has no reality. It is neither person, place, nor thing, but is simply a belief, an illusion of material sense" (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 71). The Founder of Christian Science came to that remarkable conclusion through divine revelation, rigorous metaphysical reasoning, and extensive personal experience in overcoming evil in some of its worst guises—including disease, ignorance, and malice. The sentence that immediately precedes the one just quoted shows why evil must eventually be proved illusory: "Nothing is real and eternal,—nothing is Spirit,—but God and His idea."

In the Bible's book of Ecclesiastes, "the Preacher" offers a prayer of scientific affirmation concerning good and evil in human society. He first affirms, "Lo, this only have I found, that God hath made man upright," and then adds, "but they have sought out many inventions" (7:29). In the divinely scientific view of life, God creates each man and woman upright and good. That's a fixed spiritual fact. And God maintains the original goodness of His creation.

Who, then, are the "they" that "have sought out many inventions"? According to the New Testament, those caught up in evildoing have been influenced by what St. Paul called "the carnal mind," that corruptible human thought-pattern Paul said must be "put off" for the "new man"—for the reality of spiritual manhood and womanhood. "They" and their "inventions" stand for the mistaken belief that the infinite Mind could create something quite the opposite of itself—many smaller, material minds, some of which think and do awful things.

If you're wondering whether an ancient inspired writer's words are relevant to modern-day terrorism, consider that the Hebrew word translated inventions also can mean "warlike machines" and "mental machinations." If left alone to work in secret, mortally mental machinations will produce their warlike devices. But God never leaves us undefended. As Science and Health explains: "Whoever uses his developed mental powers like an escaped felon to commit fresh atrocities as opportunity occurs is never safe. God will arrest him. Divine justice will manacle him" (p. 105).

While the ground-level means of arresting terrorism include better intelligence and decisive responses to actual safety threats, the long-term need goes deeper. Escape from malice and its effects will come through progress in humanity's understanding of the "real and eternal ... God and His idea." Christian Science is here to accelerate that shift in thought from belief in a warlike Deity to a God of universal Love; from a tribal God to the Father-Mother of all life; and from an inherently corruptible sense of manhood and womanhood to man and woman created spiritually, wholly like the Holy Spirit.

That God's goodness and love are real—and that evil and hatred, though awful to behold, are ultimately unreal—may seem like wishful theory. That is, until you've proved these facts to be true yourself by overcoming some form of "mental machination," through your own or others' prayers. Just as the darkness in an unlighted room can't resist your decision to turn on a lamp, evil has no power, no intelligence, no some-thingness, to resist the light of divine Truth.

Confidence in God's willingness to care for and protect His loved universal family will grow with each individual victory over evil's pretense to power.

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