It was a flawless autumn morning on the north coast of KwaZulu-Natal. I had been awakened by a dazzlingly beautiful sunrise over the Indian Ocean. A fish eagle had taken command of the bluest skies of the year so far.

Suddenly the peace was shattered by the snarl of a car engine as my daughter swept up the driveway in her red station wagon. She sprang from the car, visibly shaken and close to tears, to announce that one of her friends had been hijacked by a group of men armed with AK47s not more than a hundred yards from the school where my daughter had just delivered her oldest child. Her friend had escaped, but her assailants had raced to another village in her car and shot three people in a payroll robbery.

"I can scarcely believe it!" my daughter exclaimed without pausing. "At eight o'clock on a morning as beautiful as this, at a shopping center with children nearby. How evil does evil have to get before someone does something about it?"

In my hands at that moment was the Christian Science Quarterly, open to the first section of the Lesson-Sermon for that week. I held it up and pointed to a citation from Science and Health that tackled evil head-on: "The foundation of evil is laid on a belief in something besides God. This belief tends to support two opposite powers, instead of urging the claims of Truth alone. The mistake of thinking that error can be real, when it is merely the absence of truth, leads to belief in the superiority of error" (p.92).

That passage left no doubt that we had to hold to the unreality of evil, and understand that it has neither superiority nor power. Bible teachings on this subject give rich assurance of God's omnipotence, goodness, and perfection; there inevitably follows a great measure of that peace of which Isaiah wrote: "Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee: because he trusteth in thee" (Isa. 26:3).

The prophet clearly saw the coming of the Christ to human consciousness. And my daughter and I knew that if we could realize the truth of this statement, we would be liberated from the bondage of fear, and would experience the peace of mind we needed. The understanding that God is infinite Love rules out the error that there is another power—the opposite of love—called evil. And if evil is unreal, what is there to fear? Nothing but good can come to God's creation, man. To grasp this is to enter, to the degree of our understanding, into the "perfect peace" of God.

The consciousness of the presence of divine Love enables us to comprehend the exact nature of every thought that comes to us under every circumstance, and then to annul all that may be harmful, while cherishing all that is beautiful, strengthening, spiritually enriching. Nothing can hijack a pure thought from God, good.

It became clear to us that the hijackers' actions stemmed from the mortal belief that one can be cut off from God's presence and influence, and fall into evil ways. Those men might have been feeling that in the "new" South Africa they were entitled to correct the injustices of the former government by stealing a share of the "good" they felt they didn't yet have. But whatever the efforts and claims of error to deceive or obstruct or destroy, we should be so wrapped about with allegiance to our Maker that nothing can cause us to waver for an instant in our stand for the invulnerability of good. Our love for our fellowman—including those who would rob us—must be so great that no temptation can make us admit the reality of anything that God has not made.

We also found it helpful to reexamine our thoughts on forgiveness. When we forgive others, we see them in a new light—as God sees everyone, pure and perfect. When we do this, we are sometimes doing for them what they are not yet doing for themselves—responding to the call to bear witness to God's likeness. The Bible is quite clear on this: "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you; that ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven" (Matt. 5:44,45).

Before nursery school got out that day, we had been strengthened by other Bible promises as well, especially: "The Lord is my rock, and my fortress, and my deliverer; the God of my rock; in him will I trust: he is my shield, and the horn of my salvation, my high tower, and my refuge, my saviour; thou savest me from violence" (II Sam. 22:2,3). We had come to appreciate that God is not just our fortress—our protector from all harm. He is also the source of all peace and joy, which are never truly threatened. They are as endurable as God's love for us, His watchfulness.

Our protection lies in knowing that human aberrations of the kind we experienced that morning are, in fact, no more than an illustration of what Mrs. Eddy called "the absence of truth." Yet Truth, God, is ever present and unassailable. None of us—not even the hijackers—can escape the truth about God and man made in His image. Furthermore, our connection to God, to Truth, connects us to one another.

The stolen car was later recovered, but within our family that was less important than the lessons we had learned. All of us felt we had seen evidence of the truth of a saying we had known as children: "Fear came knockin on the door. Faith answered. No one was there."

By the end of that day, our faith in God's omnipotent care soared like the fish eagle we had seen at dawn.