Shortly after my kitchen was updated, I noticed some problems with the new countertops. I notified the contractors. They apologized and promised to rectify any mistakes. But several weeks went by with no further word, and when I got in touch with them again, I sensed a change in their tone. Finally, after several unsuccessful efforts to reason with them and much communication back and forth, they said they would come back and measure the countertops but would charge me substantially more than we had agreed on earlier. 

At first, I felt disheartened that anyone would want to take advantage of another person. Then, as I prayed to be shown what I needed to know, I realized that the most important issue wasn’t money, but integrity and honesty. My duty was to refute this claim of dishonesty, because dishonesty is not of God, and to avow man’s true nature as the truthful expression of divine Principle, God. As I opened the Bible at random, my eyes fell on Isaiah 61:8: “I the Lord love judgment, I hate robbery for burnt offering; and I will direct their work in truth, and I will make an everlasting covenant with them.” 

These comforting words gave me confidence that divine wisdom would guide me in a way that would enable me to resolve this situation quickly. It also came to me to deny that evil could have any reality. Christian Science teaches that because God is good and is All, evil, the opposite of good, is nothing. Mary Baker Eddy, who discovered Christian Science, writes in her Message to The Mother Church for 1901, “Evil is neither quality nor quantity: it is not intelligence, a person or a principle, a man or a woman, a place or a thing, and God never made it” (pp. 12–13). I could not have asked for a clearer reminder that evil is really a false belief about God and creation that someone can be a victim or a victimizer.