I CAN IMAGINE A STORY that must have been circulated among Christian Science lecturers a few decades ago when I was a college student in northern Idaho. It probably went something along these lines: “If you give a lecture to the College Organization at the University of Idaho, here’s a little heads-up. You’ll probably run into a guy who’ll ask you where evil comes from. And no matter how you answer the question, he’s not likely to be satisfied!”

Well, that guy was me. All those who had a CS or CSB after their name and ventured near the University probably heard from me with this question! It wasn’t exactly that I was dissatisfied with their answers. Maybe it was that I felt I was collecting lots of pieces to get a big puzzle put together.

Each individual needs to sort out his or her own thoughts on this issue. But here’s an invitation for a brief journey if you’d like to see how my path unfolded.

I did accept a basic premise that Christian Science draws from the Bible: God’s reality is infinitely good. And God is All. Therefore, evil doesn’t have any God-based origin or reality. Evil fits more into the category of an error, a mistake, an illusion, a falsehood, animal magnetism or a hypnotic state of thought. To me, the logic was sound. I was on the same page with those who answered my question along these lines. The point that continued to puzzle me, however, was this: If God is infinite, perfect, eternal Mind, how could an illusion or falsehood or mistake have taken root along the way? How did it all get started? Where was there a consciousness to begin or accept a lie? I wrestled with these questions through college and beyond.

Eventually I began to realize there would never be an acceptable answer … to the human mind. And that’s where I began to find hope for something that would truly satisfy me. As long as I tried to understand this puzzle with the human mind, I would never feel at peace. The nature of the human mind just isn’t constructed in a way that enables it to comprehend this dilemma, this enigma. The great question of theodicy—justifying God who is infinite good in light of all the apparent evil—never has been and never will be grasped by a limited mentality.

During college I took Primary class instruction in Christian Science, and this helped me grow spiritually, especially in understanding the allness of God, the one perfect Mind, and how healing is an outcome of understanding this truth. Gradually, my thought shifted away from trying to grapple with the question from the standpoint of a human mind. A defining point came when I’d been suffering for more than a week from an undiagnosed disease. This is now more than a third of a century ago, but I can vividly recall rounding a curve one night on my commute home into the mountains.

I’d been thinking of what Christian Science teaches about evil. I was suddenly overwhelmed with gratitude for Mary Baker Eddy’s discovery that evil was unreal. In that moment, the disease disappeared. It was a profound experience. I tried to grasp the significance of such a dramatic change in that moment. Was this what people called a spontaneous remission? Was it a miracle? Days of pondering brought me to the conclusion that I’d glimpsed, beyond human reasoning, an eternal truth. It was a setting aside of the human mind for a moment of reality, of God, the one Mind.

Clearly, this was a significant piece of the puzzle, helping me understand that I would be satisfied about this nagging question only by seeing reality from the standpoint of the divine Mind, not the human mind. And how could I unite adequately with this Mind to understand life from its perspective? Only by healing. Healing myself. Healing others. Helping to heal the world. Every healing in Christian Science is more than the physical freedom, or the harmony that replaces conflict, or the sin that yields to innocence. Every authentic Christian healing brings a glimpse or feeling of spiritual reality. Every healing moves our lives away from the human perspective and a little closer to the divine perspective.

The human view will always eventually be stumped. The divine knows no evil. Never has. Never will. It became clear to me that the only way to be satisfied in this search was to move from the human to the divine. And that happens with healing. Day by day, healing by healing.

When I was a kid, I thought evil hid under the bed. By college, I thought it was unreal but couldn’t figure out exactly how to reconcile this theory with day-to-day life. Now, I feel free of the puzzle.

Leaving the human for the divine is giving me a growing confidence of the revelation that evil doesn’t come from anywhere. Even more, it is possible for us, through step-by-step healing, to demonstrate the consciousness that doesn’t struggle with trying to figure out where or how evil originated. The human mind will always be puzzled.

Divine consciousness is all-knowing. It forever knows no evil, and no origin for evil. This consciousness knows and loves only the infinite truth of eternal, uninterrupted good. This is the consciousness you and I can begin living. Healing by healing.