Assurances of God’s goodness and everlasting love for His creation can be read throughout the Bible. Yet it is not unusual to believe God is capable of both good and evil. Ascribing to God the capacity for evil suggests a limitation to His infinite, all-good nature.
Since the Bible tells us God is Spirit, is it possible to gain a higher, more spiritual concept of God’s nature, and to rely on this understanding in difficult times?
To find within the Bible a reliable, spiritual understanding of an all-good God, we can start with the first chapter of the first book, Genesis. This chapter presents the first record of creation, where evil is not known by God and therefore doesn’t exist anywhere in God’s “very good” creation. According to this account, “God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them” (verse 27). This man of God’s, Spirit’s, creating is spiritual, not material.
In Genesis 2, however, we read another account of creation, clearly a material one. This account states, “The Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul” (verse 7).
That God made man is a spiritual fact. But it is commonly believed that the first and second accounts of creation in Genesis are talking about the same man. Referring to the two different creation accounts, Mary Baker Eddy points out in “Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures,” “It may be worth while here to remark that, according to the best scholars, there are clear evidences of two distinct documents in the early part of the book of Genesis” (p. 523). Christian Science teaches that the two versions of creation are not talking about the same God or the same man.
God’s true creation, which He declared to be good, is perfect, eternally harmonious. God is everlasting Love, boundless good, infinite light, and “in him is no darkness at all” (I John 1:5). This elevated view exposes discordant material conceptions as unreal and gives individual human consciousness access to what God is knowing and seeing.
This is more than theory – it’s provable. One particular instance comes to mind. My cousin and I decided to go see a long-abandoned landmark in our village. The entire area was heavily forested, so we brought with us two well-sharpened machetes and followed the footpath leading into the area. We got to a point where the footpath disappeared and decided to create a pathway.
As we hacked our way into the forest, I came upon a very rough-looking and thick climbing plant right in front of me. I assumed it would be tough to cut, so I drove the machete into it with as much force as I could muster. Unfortunately, it turned out to be very soft wood, and the machete easily sliced through it and lodged in my lower leg.
Almost immediately I resisted the urge to dwell on the pain and visible injury. I affirmed to myself that God fills all space, and therefore, good fills all space, including right where I was. And where this infinite good is, evil has no place. I affirmed that the all-knowing God knows only good and therefore has no knowledge of accidents. I was thoroughly convinced that my spiritual individuality was intact and totally unaffected.
Initially, the bleeding was profuse, so my cousin was alarmed. However, the bleeding ceased very quickly on its own. Then he suggested that we go home, which we did. I kept praying the whole way back. Man, as God’s image, is spiritual, reflecting the nature of his Maker, and therefore is not susceptible to injury but is as perfect and harmonious as God is.
When I got home, I freshened up, which included washing the injury. I refused to be impressed by the physical evidence of injury. My practice of Christian Science has given me an understanding of and trust in the fact that good is the only reality.
By that evening, when my cousin visited to check on me, there had been significant progress, and the pain had completely ceased. Just two days later, the injury was completely healed. My cousin couldn’t believe it. Perhaps the most beautiful aspect of this healing is that my cousin is today seriously studying Christian Science.
God knows only what He created, and what He created is good. We can become conscious of this all-good reality right now and know God as He truly is – as the one perfect, holy, all-loving, and infinite Divine Being – and man as God’s reflection.
Adapted from an article published in the Aug. 19, 2019, issue of the Christian Science Sentinel.
