Few Americans see natural disasters as a sign of God’s wrath or displeasure with humanity. That’s the finding of a March 2011 survey conducted by the Washington-based Public Religion Research Institute, following Japan’s catastrophic earthquake and tsunami. At a time when people may feel quite justified in asking, “What more could go wrong?” it’s in and of itself an encouraging sign—that so many realize God isn’t our enemy but our greatest friend! 

Today’s society has ever-expanding, minute-by-minute access to information of all kinds. Much of it is good. But much is focused on those natural disasters—as well as on the wars, accidents, crimes, diseases, and everything else that afflicts humanity. While this keeps us aware, it can also intensify the feeling that this life is a futile act of fending off danger after danger. Whether trouble is mounting in our personal lives or on a global scale, we need to begin countering what seems so out of control with the widely accepted fact that God is good and has all power. Knowing more about Him is always what will best keep us from sinking.   

Fortunately, this doesn’t mean eking out a new prayer for each new facet of each new problem. That kind of numbers game can put evil in the driver’s seat by heightening the appearance that it is overwhelming. Effective prayer must give us the upper hand. It needs to reveal God’s control right where trouble seems to be propagating itself. And practicing the Christ Science that Mary Baker Eddy discovered in 1866, we each have the power to reduce evil in any form to the essential status of a lie—and then correct that lie with the understanding of spiritual truth. 

Thousands have proved it possible to cultivate, for the benefit of themselves and others, what Mrs. Eddy termed spiritual sense—“a conscious, constant capacity to understand God” and “the discernment of spiritual good” (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, pp. 209 and 505)—and as a result experience whatever harmonizing effect is most needful and appropriate under the circumstances. This makes us healers at home and abroad, in the way that Jesus Christ taught.

We each have the power to reduce evil in any form to the essential status of a lie.

The Bible tells how Jesus was presented with crowds of sick people, all coming to him for help. Matthew recounts one evening when “they brought unto him many that were possessed with devils: and he cast out the spirits with his word, and healed all that were sick” (8:16). Instead of becoming overwhelmed by the appearance of multitudes in trouble, each with his or her own set of new and alarming conditions, Jesus mastered the scene with consistent healing. 

As he commanded, his followers can do these same works in this age (see John 14:12). Christian Science is based on all that Jesus taught, and Science and Health fully explains how to heal in his name, utilizing the same love and truth he expressed in his ministry, with scientifically consistent results.

There’s a story about a child who appeared repeatedly at the door on Halloween night, each time wearing a different costume in order to receive more than his share of candy. Christian Science approaches all the troubles we encounter in a similar way. It explains that in back of each new mask is the same old suppositional lie that says humanity is separated from God, which subtly presents itself in the guise of our own thought, through the vehicle of the five physical senses. In countless ways, we’re invited to believe, erroneously, that we’re vulnerable and fallible, material and mortal. 

Science and Health includes a chapter devoted to uncovering this lie, termed animal magnetism. The chapter is aptly titled “Animal Magnetism Unmasked.” In just seven succinct pages it introduces concepts so foundational to cultivating spiritual sense and healing effectively—among just a few of them the omnipotence of good; the inability of evil and willpower to attract or manipulate us as God’s children; the importance of disciplining one’s thinking; how to expose the mental state that lies behind criminality. Included in these pages is the promise to readers that “the destruction of the claims of mortal mind through Science, by which man can escape from sin and mortality, blesses the whole human family” (p. 103). 

Imagine what would happen if those of us here today began to identify each unhappy, fearful situation we’re aware of, not in terms of the troubling mask it wears but as the same basic lie—the fallacy that an evil power is lurking outside of God’s control. Our lives would never be the same. The world would never be the same.