Article September 25, 1978 Issue

Impersonalizing evil

ARDEN EVANS COOK

Perhaps you've tried to love people in spite of their faults and had the whole situation collapse on you. You may have felt guilty because you thought you were covering up their wrong actions in order to love them. Or you may have found that in your efforts to do good you put yourself in such an unprincipled position, you were vulnerable to being used or betrayed.

How can we love with integrity and at the same time be protected? We can as we gain the right sense of man in Christian Science. The only true concept is that God made him as the very expression of Himself, the idea of perfect divine Mind. We need to replace the false concept of man as a sinning mortal with the true.

How do we do this so we can live up to the standard Jesus laid down—"Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you"?^{Matt. 5:44;} By being alert to the nature of personal sense—the sense that identity is separate from God and materially formed. This false sense would have us straighten out mankind's troubles by doing something to mortals. Personal sense argues that nothing can be solved unless so-called mortal man is corrected, influenced, indulged, or even eliminated. The hope is that this will somehow get rid of evil and leave only good.