Scriptures of every religion praise God’s goodness. Many describe the Absolute Being’s good attributes in personal terms: God is merciful, loving, beautiful, gracious, compassionate, and faithful.
Yet the standard of absolute goodness is beyond the ordinary. Universal, impartial, and all-embracing, it touches all people, whether they are good or bad.
Common metaphors thus liken God’s goodness to the beneficial influences of the sun and rain that come down everywhere. The abundance and fecundity of the creation are yet another testimony to God’s goodness.
Wishing to dwell amidst goodness, the God of goodness promotes goodness both in nature and in the minds of human beings.
01God’s Goodness to Human Beings
The Lord is gracious and merciful,
slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.
The Lord is good to all,
and his compassion is over all that he has made.
Psalm 145.8-9
Allah is kind and loves whoever is kind;
Allah is clean and loves whoever is clean;
Allah is generous and loves whoever is generous.
Hadith of Muslim 913.2 (Islam)
God is not the author of all things, but of good only. Plato, The Republic 2 (Hellenism)
God the Rescuer,
God the Savior,
Almighty,
whom we joyfully adore,
Powerful God,
Invoked by all men,
May he, the bounteous, grant us his blessings!
Rig Veda 7.100.4 (Hinduism)
The Lord and Cherisher of the Worlds—
Who created me, and it is He who guides me;
Who gives me food and drink,
And when I am ill, it is He who cures me;
Who will cause me to die, and then to live again;
And who, I hope, will forgive me my faults on
the Day of Judgment.
Qur’an 26.77-82
Always created beings He cherishes;
The Creator looks to the weal of all.
Lord! invaluable are Thy blessings;
Without extent is His bounty.
Adi Granth, Kirtan Sohila, M.1, p. 12 (Sikhism)
Lo! We have shown man the way, whether he be grateful or disbelieving.
Qur’an 76.3
He makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. Matthew 5.45
It is the Way of Heaven to show no favoritism.
It is forever on the side of the good man.
Tao Te Ching 79 (Taoism)
The Tao is the refuge for the myriad creatures.
It is that by which the good man protects,
And that by which the bad is protected.
Tao Te Ching 62 (Taoism)
I have no corporeal existence,
but Universal Benevolence is my divine body.
I have no physical power,
but Uprightness is my strength.
I have no religious clairvoyance beyond what is
bestowed by Wisdom,
I have no power of a miracle other than the
attainment of quiet happiness,
I have no tact except the exercise of gentleness.
Oracle of the Kami of Sumiyoshi (Shinto)
Teachings of Sun Myung Moon
God is the Father and Mother of all emotions—joy, anger, sorrow, and pleasure. He is our Owner, who prepares a place of comfort for us when we are sad and protects us when we face difficulty. He is our absolute Parent, whose love surpasses that of anyone who ever lived. (203:228, June 26, 1990)
If God were a being of destruction, causing heaven and earth to decrease, people would want nothing to do with God. The eternal God should always provide what is needful and appropriate to human beings and all creatures.
That is why He was needed in the past, is needed in the present, and will be needed in the future. Otherwise, our worship and our desire for a relationship with God would be in vain and to no purpose. (22:317, May 11, 1969)
All religions of the world begin with the recognition that God, the Lord and Creator, is the First Cause of the universe. If this God exists, He must be good; He must be eternal and unchanging; and He must be unique and absolute. The God who created the universe must have, from the first, a purpose for creating.
The purpose of creation must also be eternal, unchanging, unique, and absolute. God’s purpose of creation is joy. He created human beings and the universe to experience joy. Joy cannot be experienced alone.
To experience joy, it is always necessary to have an object partner, or counterpart. It is only when a subject partner and object partner establish a common base and engage in give-and-take action that joy can be experienced.
Giving and receiving love is to experience the supreme joy. In sum, God created us to become His object partners, that He might experience joy eternally by relating with us in love. This is His purpose of creation. (100:241, October 19, 1978)
Each of us desires to be good. There is not a single person in the world who does not desire goodness. We know that the direction of history has been toward goodness, as educators and people of faith have labored and fought to set standards of goodness.
We are born seeking goodness and live seeking goodness—that is the purpose of our life. Since our lives are the warp and woof of history, it is the goal of history as well. (24:13, June 22, 1969)
How can we fallen human beings return to the God of goodness? First, we must grow to the point where our conscience resembles God’s original goodness. Next, we must behave following God’s word, thus manifesting God’s goodness and confirming the value of His word.
When we do this, God will rejoice on seeing the ideal of goodness for which He created all things. We humans have long pursued goodness, but finally, we will experience the value of God’s goodness by substantially embodying goodness ourselves. (2:131, July 21, 1957)
How are we to live in God’s Kingdom? We are to live with the attitude to accept anyone who comes our way. Although occasionally a thief may enter and take something, you just close your eyes to it as he leaves through the gate, knowing that at least you have something that he could take.
God thinks this way. Why? Because God feels, “Though he may be a petty thief, he is still living in My domain. Even if he takes something, he is only moving it about within the realm where I am the Owner of everything.” Do you think there are fences and locks in heaven? No, there are none.
(224:327-28, December 29, 1991)
02God’s Goodness Manifest in the Creation
God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good.
Genesis 1.31
He has created the seven heavens in harmony. You cannot see a fault in the Beneficent One’s creation; look again, can you see any flaws? Look again and yet again, and your sight will grow dim and weak [without finding any.]
Qur’an 67.3-4
This world is a garden,
The Lord its gardener,
Cherishing all, none neglected.
Adi Granth, Majh Ashtpadi, M.3, p. 118 (Sikhism)
Abundant is the year, with much millet and much rice;
And we have our high granaries,
With myriads, and hundreds of thousands,
and millions of measures;
For spirits and sweet spirits,
To present our ancestors, male and female,
And to supply all our ceremonies.
The blessings sent down on us are of every kind.
Book of Songs, Ode 279 (Confucianism)
It is He who sends down to you out of heaven water of which you may drink, and by which grow trees, for you to pasture your herds, and thereby He brings forth for you crops, and olives, and palms, and vines, and all manner of fruit.
Surely in that is a sign for a people who reflect. And He subjected for you the night and day, and the sun and moon; and the stars are subjected by His command.
Surely in that are signs for a people who understand. And He has multiplied for you in the earth things of diverse hues. Surely in that is a sign for a people who remember.
It is He who subjected for you the sea, that you may eat of it fresh flesh, and bring forth out of it ornaments for you to wear; and you may see the ships cleaving through it; that you may seek of His bounty, and so haply you will be thankful…
If you count God’s blessing, you can never number it; surely God is All-forgiving, All-compassionate. Qur’an 16.10-18
The great Tao flows everywhere;
It can go left; it can go right.
The myriad things owe their existence to it,
And it does not reject them.
When its work is accomplished,
It does not take possession.
It clothes and feeds all,
But does not pose as their master.
Ever without ambition,
It may be called Small.
All things return to it as their home,
And yet it does not pose as their master,
Therefore it may be called Great.
Because it would never claim greatness,
Therefore its greatness is fully realized.
Tao Te Ching 34 (Taoism)
Let me tell you then why the Creator made this world of generation. He was good, and the good can never have any jealousy of anything. And being free from jealousy, he desired that all things should be as like himself as they could be.
This is in the truest sense the origin of creation and of the world, as we shall do well in believing on the testimony of wise men: God desired that all things should be good and nothing bad, so far as this was attainable.
Wherefore also finding the whole visible sphere not at rest, but moving in an irregular and disorderly fashion, out of disorder he brought order, considering that this was in every way better than the other.
Now the deeds of the best could never be or have been other than the fairest; and the Creator, reflecting on the things which are by nature visible, found that no unintelligent creatures taken as a whole were fairer than the intelligent taken as a whole; and that intelligence could not be present in anything that was devoid of soul.
For which reason, when he was framing the universe, he put intelligence in soul, and the soul in the body, that he might be the creator of a work which was by nature fairest and best.
Wherefore, using the language of probability, we may say that the world became a living creature truly endowed with soul and intelligence by the providence of God. Plato, Timaeus (Hellenism)
The primary cause of the pure unity of Enlightenment and Nirvana that has existed from beginningless time is the principle of integrating compassion, the indrawing, unifying principle of purity, harmony, likeness, rhythm, permanency, and peace.
By the indrawing of this Principle within the brightness of your own nature, its unifying spirit can be discovered and developed and realized under all varieties of conditions. Surangama Sutra (Buddhism)
Teachings of Sun Myung Moon
When looking at reality from the perspective of love, God is the root. The root communicates through the stem to the sprouting leaves, which spread out in all directions: east, west, south, and north. As the plant spreads out, its leaves sprout more abundantly, the stem grows stronger, and the root grows larger.
Live like this, and you will discover that God is the loving vertical Father of our human world. God is our Creator and Father who bestows true love in abundance. (203:352, June 28, 1990)
Everything exists for the sake of something greater than itself, and the greater thing for something still greater. It is wrong to think that life is simply about the strong eating the weak, as Charles Darwin taught. That perspective on life is dead wrong.
The Lord of the universe—the Creator of the universe—created all things for the sake of human beings. All creatures were created with that specific purpose in mind. (217:204, June 1, 1991)
God is the omnipotent and omniscient King of wisdom. In creating the universe of subject-object relationships, He had to decide whether the origin of true love, true happiness, true peace, and the true ideal of the human world should be in the subject partner or the object partner. God had to decide on this matter with the eternal ideal world in mind.
If God had set things up in such a way that all object beings must serve Him, then human beings would establish that same tradition: “Everyone must serve me.” This would have created serious problems. There would be no way to achieve unity, harmony or development.
Thus, we understand: rather than demanding that object partners attend the subject partner, God invariably takes the position that He exists for the sake of His object partners.
This way, everything becomes one; there is progress and development. Hence, the almighty God decided to set up the standard of peace, happiness, love, and the ideal as “living for the sake of others.” (72:14, May 7, 1974)
END OF BOOK CHAPTER