Lies, gossip, slander, sometimes seem to hit us just when we feel we are doing a good job. How we deal with them has a lot to do with our peace of mind—at home, in church work, in the dormitory, or at our place of business.

I once found myself the butt of malicious gossip in college. After stewing about it for a while I called a Christian Science practitioner.

"Did God say it?" she asked.

"No!" I said. "So-and-so did."

"Well," she concluded, "if God didn't say it, it's never been said!"

Because I understood God to be omnipresent, omnipotent, wholly good, and man, His creation, to be perfect and spiritual, reflecting only the activity of perfect God, I knew that if God had never done this unkind thing, it had never in reality been done. This was enough to heal me of distress over the situation. My relations with the individual perpetrating the gossip grew more harmonious, until finally there was a peaceful separation.

Hating the perpetrator of evil lies will never correct the lie or heal the liar. As Truth, or God, is All, an evil lie cannot occupy space or appear real in God's infinite goodness. Since the true identity of all men and women is spiritual and perfect, evil is never person. Everyone is in reality the spiritual reflection of Mind, or Truth. An envious, hateful, malicious mortal is not the truth of God's creation.

Mrs. Eddy, who discovered and founded Christian Science, had to refute many misconceptions and lies about it. She writes: "Jesus said of personified evil, that it was 'a liar, and the father of it.' Truth creates neither a lie, a capacity to lie, nor a liar." ^{Science and Health, p. 357;} Christ Jesus also characterized the devil, or evil, this way: "He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him." ^{John 8:44;}

Spiritual thoughts are based on divine Mind. Material thinking is based on mortal mind. In absolute Christian Science there is no mortal mind to originate evil thinking. A lie cannot destroy the right ideas of Truth; to believe it could would be like saying nothing can destroy something. Nothing is always nothing—lifeless, mindless. Mortal mind, the belief of intelligence apart from the one Mind, has no ability with which to promote or sustain itself.

Man manifests the omniscient intelligence of Mind. This intelligence is always conscious of the truth. Intelligent being, man, understands spiritually. The spiritual fact is all there is to know.

If we knew all the truth there is to know about any given situation, we could never believe a lie about it. There is nothing unknown to infinite Mind, or Truth, nothing outside the realm of Truth's perfect comprehension.

Condemnation of the lie, not condemnation of a person, is what heals. Jesus sternly denied the evil that would have controlled the thoughts of his contemporaries. His Christly approach is one we can adopt. This Christly rule, "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself," ^{Matt. 22:39;} when practiced, works as a law of good, a law of love, to banish every lie about man.

When we are honest—that is, honest about the spiritual reality of perfect God and perfect idea, man—and when we keep man's perfection in thought regardless of the lying human sense of error and hate that may appear to use us or our fellowman, we will be able to reject any lie, instead of ruminating over it.

Truthfulness is a quality of Truth everyone possesses. It is the best defense against any lie. The God–prompted uncovering of evil, no matter how awful the stench or how loud the noise accompanying the uncovering, is good, for a lie uncovered is on its way to being destroyed. Any remaining portion cannot last when Mind's supremacy, Truth's ever-presence, and the eternal law of God, or Principle, are acknowledged as ever operative, all-powerful, and all-good.

Knowing that man reflects divine consciousness, we can discern through spiritual sense the reality of good. We can reject immediately any lying suggestion of the carnal, material mind. If it isn't of God, it isn't good. If it isn't good, we cannot accept it. We wouldn't knowingly accept something into our mentality if we knew it wouldn't help us to be happy, harmonious, or healthy. Truth always blesses and uplifts, and it heals all manner of discord. Truth, continuing uninterrupted in our thought, impels us to reject every lie about God and man.

We have God-given strength to reject evil—to know the goodness of God and to see the perfect integrity of man. Mrs. Eddy says, "We sustain Truth, not by accepting, but by rejecting a lie." ^{Science and Health, p. 357.}