THIS WEEK'S BIBLE LESSON poses the provocative question, "Are Sin, Disease, and Death Real?" In the Christian Science Sunday School, I probably gave a one-word answer to this one. But I learned that Christ Jesus' life and ministry show—and readers can explore through the passages selected for this Easter Week message—that the nature of all that troubles human existence is best discerned in the laboratory of one's own life.

When a Sunday School teacher's question sounded as if it required a positive response, then the easy-escape answer was another one-word response—"Good." You know: "What is God to you?" "Good!" "And what are you as God's child?" "Good!"

If you're still wondering what good really is—what it means to know God as the sum of all good and ourselves as entirely good and whole in God's care—then this Lesson is your Easter banquet. Its "Golden Text" sets the scene and invites you in.

"I follow the thing that good is," from Psalm 38, is rendered more directly in the New Revised Standard Version: "I follow after good." The Hebrew word translated "good" in this verse, towb, appears throughout the Lesson's Bible citations, including in this summary statement of spiritual creation: "And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good" (Gen. 1:31, citation. 5). As an adjective the Hebrew word can be translated "pleasant," "agreeable," "excellent," and "benign." As a verb it means to be good, pleasing, joyful, beneficial, favorable, happy, right; also, to be in good health.

The Psalmist wrote of God, "You are good and do good; teach me your statutes" (Ps. 119:68, cit. 3, NRSV), welding together good as a divine attribute and as divine action. Within this union of God's nature and activity lies the power behind the joyous Easter cry, "He is risen!" Good is a quality of God and of what He creates. But vastly more than that, good as God is all that's substantial and active and alive, and Christ is the action or effect of good, God's healing and life-saving influence in the world. We can rise because the Christ is always rising within our hearts. "Rise in the strength of Spirit to resist all that is unlike good," Mary Baker Eddy wrote. "God has made man capable of this, and nothing can vitiate the ability and power divinely bestowed on man" (Science and Health, p. 393, cit. 30).

Another passage in Science and Health points toward an answer to the core question posed by this Lesson: "God is natural good, and is represented only by the idea of goodness; while evil should be regarded as unnatural, because it is opposed to the nature of Spirit, God" (p. 119, cit. 9).

What of the evil that provoked an innocent man's crucifixion? Unlike book and movie reviews that need spoiler alerts to avoid revealing plot twists and endings, most of the world knows the outcome of Jesus' trial before Pilate. He was convicted by mob rule and executed on a cross. Did that outcome somehow prove that evil is real and more powerful than good? Consider a passage that Jesus may well have known from his study of the Hebrew Scriptures: "I will protect those who know my name. When they call to me, I will answer them; I will be with them in trouble, I will rescue them and honor them" (Ps. 91:14, 15, Responsive Reading, NRSV). He who knew God's name—His nature as living, all-acting good—must have known his safety in good. Even in the face of the earthly finality called death, good goes on, rescues and honors those in trouble.

The Access Bible calls Psalm 91 "a psalm of trust" and notes that even in the most threatening of circumstances—persecution, disease, war—God will deliver and protect those who trust in Him. "God's angels or 'messengers,' " notes this commentary, "provide constant protection" (p. 759). Did God's good protection break down at the moment of crucifixion? No. The continuous life that each of us has in God was proved in Jesus' resurrection and ascension. The is and does of good knows no interruption. In fact, Jesus proved evil unreal on all three counts, healing sin and sickness and overcoming death.

Christian Science elevates the joyous exclamation, "He is risen," into a message that comes to individual consciousness straight from God's unchangeable goodness. "Christ," Science and Health explains, "is the true idea voicing good, the divine message from God to men speaking to the human consciousness" (p. 332, cit. 25).

The Christ answers 911-like calls for help with the message of Psalms 91:1—through whatever troubles come your way, you dwell "in the secret place of the most High," and abide "under the shadow of the Almighty" (cit. 2). And every time someone proves in some measure that good is indestructible, its opposites are shown to be insubstantial, and ultimately, illusory.

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