From early childhood I've felt drawn to God. My family lived in Europe and Latin America while I was growing up, so I was exposed not only to an array of cultures but to a variety of perspectives about God. After college my search for God deepened, and I spent many years working for a Protestant church in New York City.

Amid this diverse experience, the Biblical assurance "Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free" represented a powerful promise (John 8:32). I yearned for the clarity and freedom that truth brings—especially with regard to the question of evil. Yet my journey toward the discovery that evil is untrue, a mistake, didn't come without a struggle.

Sometimes a mistake is so entrenched that it's hard to recognize, let alone correct. While one is believing a mistake, it isn't easy to accept truth. I recall years ago struggling with a mathematics problem in school. I kept arriving at the same wrong conclusion. Soon I was justifying my calculations and questioning the validity of the right answer!

It's no surprise that answers which challenge fundamental beliefs about the nature of reality often meet with great opposition. Today, who would question the heliocentric planetary motion set forth by Copernicus? But when originally proposed, this unwelcome truth threatened centuries of deep-seated religious belief, and his work was not published for many years.

I experienced how tenacious a mistake can be when I first peered through the correcting lens of Christian Science a few years ago. I was introduced to this Science through my husband and his family, who are lifelong adherents, and was naturally curious to learn more about their Church and the healing prayer it teaches—prayer that has been relied on for generations.

Many of the ideas were familiar to me and brought clarity and strength to my own cherished views. I happily embraced a God who is Love, supreme good, omnipotent Spirit, all-knowing and ever-present Mind, the one and only creator, who made man in His "image" and "likeness" (see Gen. 1:26). But when it came to accepting the logical ramifications of these ideas, I was faced with a new view of evil, and I resisted.

Science and Health states, "We lose the high signification of omnipotence, when after admitting that God, or good, is omnipresent and has all-power, we still believe there is another power, named evil" (p. 469). A little further on it explains, "If God, or good, is real, then evil, the unlikeness of God, is unreal" (p. 470). Here was a startling and radical concept: that evil does not exist in God's reality, that its presumed power and tenacity are untrue.

Thinking through these two statements from Science and Health, I could grasp their logic. If God is, indeed, omnipotent good, then total allegiance to this one and only God must mean an absolute allegiance to good, including the utter abandonment of faith in anything that is unlike good, whether this "unlikeness" be in thought, word, or deed. Habakkuk declared of God, "Thou art of purer eyes than to behold evil" (1:13). As the image of God, good, we too must be "of purer eyes."

I could also see that if God's infinite reality fills all space and reigns supreme, then evil can have no reality or dwelling place. The coexistence of these opposites is contradictory and would constitute a kingdom divided against itself, which could not stand (see Mark 3:24). Christ Jesus warns of our inability to serve "two masters" (see Luke 16:13), and the prophet Joshua challenges us, "... choose you this day whom ye will serve" (24:15). From what I was learning in Christian Science, the choice seemed quite clear: service to the one infinite God meant seeing good as the only power, eternally, and denying evil any power, ever.

I understood the logic, and yet the practical application felt beyond reach. To retrace and reinterpret my life and all of existence from the sole premise of absolute good seemed unimaginable to me, if not impossible. How could I deny a lifetime's experience of the legitimacy of evil, with its manifestations constantly paraded before my eyes? I felt as though I'd hit an impasse.

As I contemplated this problem, my resistance and skepticism grew. I immersed myself in the ills of the world, pointing out its sin, disease, and death, and I defied anyone to say these weren't true. This, however, proved a dead end. Wrestling with evil, I became sullied and sullen. Far from finding any peace or resolution, I felt increasingly depressed and resentful, unable either to make sense of evil or to let it go.

I struggled at length in this unhappy state. As I prayed to know the truth and was finally still enough to listen, a flood of questions emerged: Why was I defending evil? Didn't I want to see it defeated, destroyed? Why was I resisting learning of its unreality? Was I justifying evil the way I had defended that math mistake during my school days? Was this just another example of a "Copernicus reaction"? How could I determine if this Science was true if I remained entrenched in my disbelief?

These questions brought me up short. I felt challenged and humbled. Though still confounded by evil, I realized the need to stop my embattled arguments and to turn my thought to God, good. How else would I be led to the truth and to the fulfillment of Jesus' assurance that "the kingdom of God is at hand"? (Mark 1:15) I determined to resume my study of Christian Science with a more open heart. As I did, light began to dawn.

Science and Health affirms: "Evil is nothing, no thing, mind, nor power. As manifested by mankind it stands for a lie, nothing claiming to be something..." (p. 330). Suddenly I made the connection: evil is indeed "wrong," not a something that's morally wrong, but nothing, a misconception or error—a mistaken belief. Hence, regardless of how real the mistake appears to the physical senses—no matter what frightening manifestation evil assumes—it remains false, a complete and utter lie. And no argument, however persuasive, can ever make it true.

No wonder I couldn't make any headway in my struggle—I'd been playing a hopeless tug-of-war with a phantom, literally pulling at air! I could no more substantiate the claims of evil than I could prove the flatness of the earth; both seem real, yet are not. As I grasped this fact of evil's nothingness, I was suddenly free. The burden lifted and I was at peace. I felt the presence of good—as I never had before—and its powerful influence has stayed with me.

Understanding evil to be a mistake and not a truth has greatly forwarded my journey toward freedom and dominion, and as this awakening has taken deeper root, my whole outlook has steadily grown brighter. Instead of feeling overwhelmed by, or trying to ignore, that which is wrong, I'm better able now to resolve problems with the understanding that evil has no basis or reality and, therefore, no power over me. These days I welcome the opportunity for spiritual correction rather than resist it, and I've found that negative thoughts, habits, and feelings have naturally come to light and been healed. Earnestly praying to recognize God's allness has brought the "newness of life" Paul refers to in Romans (6:4). I'm happier and healthier than I've ever been.

I know there is still so much more to learn and demonstrate. But as I've begun to live these lessons, I find that the effort to acknowledge the government of God, good, in my every thought, word, and deed brings His healing truth to every situation and helps me fulfill the command of Christ "Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect" (Matt. 5:48).