In keeping with this week’s lesson on the subject of dealing of the unreality of evil, Mrs. Eddy has said, “To be delivered from believing in what is unreal, from fearing it, following it, or loving it, one must watch and pray that he enter not into temptation — even as one guards his door against the approach of thieves. Wrong is thought before it is acted; you must control it in the first instance [just as Jesus had to do throughout his trial in the wilderness] or it will control you in the second. To overcome all wrong, it must become unreal to us: and it is good to know that wrong has no divine authority; therefore man is its master” (Message to The Mother Church for 1901, p. 14).
With each confrontation with evil in the wilderness, Jesus condemned it, yet not because the power of evil was real to him, but because it was unreal to him. In sharply condemning evil, he absolutely refused to let evil mesmerize him into accepting it as reality.
Jesus said to his followers, “I give you power over all the power of the enemy.” If evil is unreal, why would Jesus say such a thing? Why would Jesus require his followers — past, present, and future — to confront, condemn, and cast out evil, something that is non-existent?
Mrs. Eddy continues, “Error uncondemned is not nullified. We must condemn the claim of error in every phase in order to prove it false, therefore unreal” (emphasis added).
It is not enough simply to believe that evil is unreal; we must prove it to be unreal — in the same way a math teacher does not allow an error to remain on the blackboard except to point out its inaccuracy.