As we look at what’s going on in the world today, it may seem impossible to believe that there is a God who is more powerful than evil—let alone the only power there is. We might even find ourselves asking the question one letter writer who recently contacted the Sentinel did, yearning to know if there is a God who is good and loving. 

The Discoverer of Christian Science, Mary Baker Eddy, had questions about the nature of God and whether what she’d been taught about Him coincided with either her experience of the world or what, in her heart, she believed God to be. 

She grew up in a devout Christian family, and when still a girl, asked her mother if what Christian theologian John Calvin had taught about eternal punishment was true. “Mary, I suppose it is,” her mother said. Young Mary replied, “What . . . if we repent and tell God ‘we are sorry and will not do so again.’ Will God punish us then? Then he is not as good as my mother and he will find me a hard case” (Yvonne Caché von Fettweis and Robert Townsend Warneck, Mary Baker Eddy: Christian Healer, Amplified Edition, p. 33).