In one of the temptations of Christ recorded in Matt 4:6, it is reported that Christ is tempted thusly: "'If you are the Son of God,' he said, 'throw yourself down. For it is written: 'He will command his angels concerning you, and they will lift you up in their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.'" The passage referred to is in Psalms 91:11-12 where it is written: "For he will command his angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways; they will lift you up in their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone." This passage is meant to indicate the scope of care that God has for his children, i.e., it is so pervasive that they will be guarded so completely that they will not even stub their toe. In light of the many stubbed toes in the world, this scripture seems to be wanting; but the greater (and more significant) Truth is missed. That Truth is that we are never outside of God's attention; whatever the outer conditions of our life seem to indicate, we are held firmly in the grasp of God's attention; God is always watching. And what is in God's attention is in God's mind, hence, within God; and, since there is no evil in God, we have before us something of a paradox: how can something so apparently evil be in God?
When I was a boy, my minister asked me one day: "If you call a dog's tail a leg, how many legs does it have?" I'm embarrassed to say that I got it wrong because I confused the hypothetical conditions of the question with the reality demanded by the answer to the question. The answer, of course, is "four because calling a dog's tail a leg doesn't make it a leg." To be sure, we see much in our experience to warrant calling it "evil," but, in reality no evil can have been done because no evil can be in God.
This may seem a glib and cavalier answer to the problem of evil but it is only "glib" and "cavalier" because we ascribe "reality" status to separate individuals and we are willing to divide the essential Oneness of the Presence of the "I AM" in order to see each individual as separate from God, i.e., outside God. Calling a person "separate" doesn't make that person separate; and doing "harm" to the shadow of a hand doesn't affect the hand. You may dream that you are chased by a tiger and that during the chase you trip over a root, fall, and skin your knees, but when you awaken there is no blood on the sheets nor the pungent scent of the jungle hanging in the bedroom. But, still, how do we change such disruptive energy as what we have been calling "evil"?
All is in the "I AM" and it is by the "I AM" that we must change it. This means that we immediately rule out one of Hamlet's famous options, that is, we cannot "take arms against a sea of troubles and, by opposing, end them." But, paradoxically, we also do not have access to the other horn of his dilemma, i.e., "not to be," because we are already a focus of the "I AM" which guarantees our Life. We, therefore, must accept our role as that focus and daily decree: "I AM the Resurrection and the Life"; indeed, hourly if need be.
The "self" that thinks it is apart from the One must be brought back to sanity in the same way it was driven from it, namely, by repeated reminders of what is to be accepted as Truth. The "guard" that God has over each child to watch "lest Thou dash Thy foot against a stone" is not a guard over the illusion of the self but over the actual Self and that Self never stubs its toe. Once we return the seat of our identity to that Self, we will see and live in a completely different world--a world of Light and Love. It is strange to note that although it is impossible to steal what is free; it is not impossible to think you have stolen it and, subsequently, create a world of your own experience as though the impossible had actually happened and there live with all the attendant misery that such a false belief implies and creates.
The Beloved One is never out of mind; ever do thoughts of Love and Light stand guard.
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