goodness

• divinity comprehensible as

0:1.17Di­vin­ity is crea­ture com­pre­hen­si­ble as truth, beauty, and good­ness; cor­re­lated in per­son­al­ity as love, mercy, and min­istry; dis­closed on im­per­sonal lev­els as jus­tice, power, and sov­er­eignty.

• defined as › understandable only in relation to personality

1:7.3The con­cept of truth might pos­si­bly be en­ter­tained apart from per­son­al­ity, the con­cept of beauty may ex­ist with­out per­son­al­ity, but the con­cept of di­vine good­ness is un­der­stand­able only in re­la­tion to per­son­al­ity. Only a per­son can love and be loved. Even beauty and truth would be di­vorced from sur­vival hope if they were not at­tri­butes of a per­sonal God, a lov­ing Fa­ther.

• goodness of God › greatest evidence is indwelling Adjuster

2:5.5Af­ter all, the great­est ev­i­dence of the good­ness of God and the su­preme rea­son for lov­ing him is the in­dwelling gift of the Fa­ther—the Ad­juster who so pa­tiently awaits the hour when you both shall be eter­nally made one. Though you can­not find God by search­ing, if you will sub­mit to the lead­ing of the in­dwelling spirit, you will be unerringly guided, step by step, life by life, through uni­verse upon uni­verse, and age by age, un­til you fi­nally stand in the pres­ence of the Par­a­dise per­son­al­ity of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther.

• goodness of God › found only in personal religious experience
• goodness of God › man trusts and loves only a good God

2:6.1In the phys­i­cal uni­verse we may see the di­vine beauty, in the in­tel­lec­tual world we may dis­cern eter­nal truth, but the good­ness of God is found only in the spir­i­tual world of per­sonal re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence. In its true essence, re­li­gion is a faith-trust in the good­ness of God. God could be great and ab­so­lute, some­how even in­tel­li­gent and per­sonal, in phi­los­o­phy, but in re­li­gion God must also be moral; he must be good. Man might fear a great God, but he trusts and loves only a good God. This good­ness of God is a part of the per­son­al­ity of God, and its full rev­e­la­tion ap­pears only in the per­sonal re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence of the be­liev­ing sons of God.

2:6.2Re­li­gion im­plies that the super­world of spirit na­ture is cog­nizant of, and re­spon­sive to, the fun­da­men­tal needs of the hu­man world. Evo­lu­tion­ary re­li­gion may be­come eth­i­cal, but only re­vealed re­li­gion be­comes truly and spir­i­tu­ally moral. The olden con­cept that God is a De­ity dom­i­nated by kingly moral­ity was up­stepped by Je­sus to that af­fec­tion­ately touch­ing level of in­ti­mate fam­ily moral­ity of the par­ent-child re­la­tion­ship, than which there is none more ten­der and beau­ti­ful in mor­tal ex­pe­ri­ence.

• goodness of God › leads men into repentance

2:6.3The “rich­ness of the good­ness of God leads erring man to re­pen­tance.” “Ev­ery good gift and ev­ery per­fect gift comes down from the Fa­ther of lights.” “God is good; he is the eter­nal refuge of the souls of men.” “The Lord God is mer­ci­ful and gra­cious. He is long-suf­fer­ing and abun­dant in good­ness and truth.” “Taste and see that the Lord is good! Blessed is the man who trusts him.” “The Lord is gra­cious and full of com­pas­sion. He is the God of sal­va­tion.” “He heals the bro­ken­hearted and binds up the wounds of the soul. He is man’s all-pow­er­ful bene­fac­tor.”

2:6.4The con­cept of God as a king-judge, al­though it fos­tered a high moral stan­dard and cre­ated a law-re­spect­ing peo­ple as a group, left the in­di­vid­ual be­liever in a sad po­si­tion of in­se­cu­rity re­spect­ing his sta­tus in time and in eter­nity. The later He­brew proph­ets pro­claimed God to be a Fa­ther to Is­rael; Je­sus re­vealed God as the Fa­ther of each hu­man be­ing. The en­tire mor­tal con­cept of God is tran­scen­dently il­lu­mi­nated by the life of Je­sus. Self­less­ness is in­her­ent in pa­ren­tal love. God loves not like a fa­ther, but as a fa­ther. He is the Par­a­dise Fa­ther of ev­ery uni­verse per­son­al­ity.

2:6.5Righ­teous­ness im­plies that God is the source of the moral law of the uni­verse. Truth ex­hibits God as a re­vealer, as a teacher. But love gives and craves af­fec­tion, seeks un­der­stand­ing fel­low­ship such as ex­ists be­tween par­ent and child. Righ­teous­ness may be the di­vine thought, but love is a fa­ther’s at­ti­tude. The er­ro­neous sup­po­si­tion that the righ­teous­ness of God was ir­rec­on­cil­able with the self­less love of the heav­enly Fa­ther, pre­sup­posed ab­sence of unity in the na­ture of De­ity and led di­rectly to the elab­o­ra­tion of the atone­ment doc­trine, which is a philo­sophic as­sault upon both the unity and the free-will­ness of God.

2:6.6The af­fec­tion­ate heav­enly Fa­ther, whose spirit in­dwells his chil­dren on earth, is not a di­vided per­son­al­ity—one of jus­tice and one of mercy—nei­ther does it re­quire a me­di­a­tor to se­cure the Fa­ther’s fa­vor or for­give­ness. Di­vine righ­teous­ness is not dom­i­nated by strict re­tribu­tive jus­tice; God as a fa­ther tran­scends God as a judge.

2:6.7God is never wrath­ful, venge­ful, or an­gry. It is true that wis­dom does of­ten re­strain his love, while jus­tice con­di­tions his re­jected mercy. His love of righ­teous­ness can­not help be­ing ex­hib­ited as equal ha­tred for sin. The Fa­ther is not an in­con­sis­tent per­son­al­ity; the di­vine unity is per­fect. In the Par­a­dise Trin­ity there is ab­so­lute unity de­spite the eter­nal iden­ti­ties of the co-or­di­nates of God.

2:6.8God loves the sin­ner and hates the sin: such a state­ment is true phil­o­soph­i­cally, but God is a tran­scen­dent per­son­al­ity, and per­sons can only love and hate other per­sons. Sin is not a per­son. God loves the sin­ner be­cause he is a per­son­al­ity re­al­ity (po­ten­tially eter­nal), while to­wards sin God strikes no per­sonal at­ti­tude, for sin is not a spir­i­tual re­al­ity; it is not per­sonal; there­fore does only the jus­tice of God take cog­nizance of its ex­is­tence. The love of God saves the sin­ner; the law of God de­stroys the sin. This at­ti­tude of the di­vine na­ture would ap­par­ently change if the sin­ner fi­nally iden­ti­fied him­self wholly with sin just as the same mor­tal mind may also fully iden­tify it­self with the in­dwelling spirit Ad­juster. Such a sin-iden­ti­fied mor­tal would then be­come wholly un­spir­i­tual in na­ture (and there­fore per­son­ally un­real) and would ex­pe­ri­ence even­tual ex­tinc­tion of be­ing. Un­re­al­ity, even in­com­plete­ness of crea­ture na­ture, can­not ex­ist for­ever in a pro­gress­ingly real and in­creas­ingly spir­i­tual uni­verse.

2:6.9Fac­ing the world of per­son­al­ity, God is dis­cov­ered to be a lov­ing per­son; fac­ing the spir­i­tual world, he is a per­sonal love; in re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence he is both. Love iden­ti­fies the vo­li­tional will of God. The good­ness of God rests at the bot­tom of the di­vine free-will­ness—the uni­ver­sal ten­dency to love, show mercy, man­i­fest pa­tience, and min­is­ter for­give­ness.

• defined as › stabilizing

2:7.12Truth is co­her­ent, beauty at­trac­tive, good­ness sta­bi­liz­ing. And when these val­ues of that which is real are co-or­di­nated in per­son­al­ity ex­pe­ri­ence, the re­sult is a high or­der of love con­di­tioned by wis­dom and qual­i­fied by loy­alty. The real pur­pose of all uni­verse ed­u­ca­tion is to ef­fect the bet­ter co-or­di­na­tion of the iso­lated child of the worlds with the larger re­al­i­ties of his ex­pand­ing ex­pe­ri­ence. Re­al­ity is fi­nite on the hu­man level, in­fi­nite and eter­nal on the higher and di­vine lev­els.

• defined as › nearness to divinity

3:6.2The sov­er­eignty of God is un­lim­ited; it is the fun­da­men­tal fact of all cre­ation. The uni­verse was not in­ev­i­ta­ble. The uni­verse is not an ac­ci­dent, nei­ther is it self-ex­is­tent. The uni­verse is a work of cre­ation and is there­fore wholly sub­ject to the will of the Cre­ator. The will of God is di­vine truth, liv­ing love; there­fore are the per­fect­ing cre­ations of the evo­lu­tion­ary uni­verses char­ac­ter­ized by good­ness—near­ness to di­vin­ity; by po­ten­tial evil—re­mote­ness from di­vin­ity.

• all things work together for good

4:1.4There is no lim­i­ta­tion of the forces and per­son­al­i­ties which the Fa­ther may use to up­hold his pur­pose and sus­tain his crea­tures. “The eter­nal God is our refuge, and un­der­neath are the ev­er­last­ing arms.” “He who dwells in the se­cret place of the Most High shall abide un­der the shadow of the Al­mighty.” “Be­hold, he who keeps us shall nei­ther slum­ber nor sleep.” “We know that all things work to­gether for good to those who love God,” “for the eyes of the Lord are over the righ­teous, and his ears are open to their prayers.”

• all things work together for good

4:1.11I am in­clined to be­lieve that it is this far-flung and gen­er­ally un­rec­og­niz­able con­trol of the co-or­di­na­tion and in­teras­so­ci­a­tion of all phases and forms of uni­verse ac­tiv­ity that causes such a var­ie­gated and ap­par­ently hope­lessly con­fused med­ley of phys­i­cal, men­tal, moral, and spir­i­tual phe­nom­ena so unerringly to work out to the glory of God and for the good of men and an­gels.

• and evil
• goodness of God › beyond man’s comprehension
• nature of goodness › understandable by contrast with comparative evil (not sin)

4:3.6The in­fi­nite good­ness of the Fa­ther is be­yond the com­pre­hen­sion of the fi­nite mind of time; hence must there al­ways be af­forded a con­trast with com­par­a­tive evil (not sin) for the ef­fec­tive ex­hi­bi­tion of all phases of rel­a­tive good­ness. Per­fec­tion of di­vine good­ness can be dis­cerned by mor­tal im­per­fec­tion of in­sight only be­cause it stands in con­trastive as­so­ci­a­tion with rel­a­tive im­per­fec­tion in the re­la­tion­ships of time and mat­ter in the mo­tions of space.

• nature of goodness › all g. takes origin in Father

8:2.7It is not pos­si­ble that the Spirit could have more of good­ness than the Fa­ther since all good­ness takes ori­gin in the Fa­ther, but in the acts of the Spirit we can the bet­ter com­pre­hend such good­ness. The Fa­ther’s faith­ful­ness and the Son’s con­stancy are made very real to the spirit be­ings and the ma­te­rial crea­tures of the spheres by the lov­ing min­istry and cease­less ser­vice of the per­son­al­i­ties of the In­fi­nite Spirit.

• all things work together for good

10:7.5The mor­tal mind can im­me­di­ately think of a thou­sand and one things—catas­trophic phys­i­cal events, ap­palling ac­ci­dents, hor­rific dis­as­ters, painful ill­nesses, and world-wide scourges—and ask whether such vis­i­ta­tions are cor­re­lated in the un­known ma­neu­ver­ing of this prob­a­ble func­tion­ing of the Su­preme Be­ing. Frankly, we do not know; we are not re­ally sure. But we do ob­serve that, as time passes, all these dif­fi­cult and more or less mys­te­ri­ous sit­u­a­tions al­ways work out for the wel­fare and prog­ress of the uni­verses. It may be that the cir­cum­stances of ex­is­tence and the in­ex­pli­ca­ble vi­cis­si­tudes of liv­ing are all in­ter­wo­ven into a mean­ing­ful pat­tern of high value by the func­tion of the Su­preme and the over­con­trol of the Trin­ity.

10:7.6As a son of God you can dis­cern the per­sonal at­ti­tude of love in all the acts of God the Fa­ther. But you will not al­ways be able to un­der­stand how many of the uni­verse acts of the Par­a­dise Trin­ity re­dound to the good of the in­di­vid­ual mor­tal on the evo­lu­tion­ary worlds of space. In the prog­ress of eter­nity the acts of the Trin­ity will be re­vealed as al­to­gether mean­ing­ful and con­sid­er­ate, but they do not al­ways so ap­pear to the crea­tures of time.

• nature of goodness › cannot be divorced from greatness

28:6.21Great­ness is syn­ony­mous with di­vin­ity. God is su­premely great and good. Great­ness and good­ness sim­ply can­not be di­vorced. They are for­ever made one in God. This truth is lit­er­ally and strik­ingly il­lus­trated by the re­flec­tive in­ter­de­pen­dence of the Se­cret of Great­ness and the Soul of Good­ness, for nei­ther can func­tion with­out the other. In re­flect­ing other qual­i­ties of di­vin­ity, the super­uni­verse se­con­a­phim can and do act alone, but the re­flec­tive es­ti­mates of great­ness and of good­ness ap­pear to be in­sep­a­ra­ble. Hence, on any world, in any uni­verse, must these re­flec­tors of great­ness and of good­ness work to­gether, al­ways show­ing a dual and mu­tu­ally de­pen­dent re­port of ev­ery be­ing upon whom they fo­cal­ize. Great­ness can­not be es­ti­mated with­out know­ing the con­tent of good­ness, while good­ness can­not be por­trayed with­out ex­hibit­ing its in­her­ent and di­vine great­ness.

• nature of goodness › become good through grace

28:6.22The es­ti­mate of great­ness varies from sphere to sphere. To be great is to be God­like. And since the qual­ity of great­ness is wholly de­ter­mined by the con­tent of good­ness, it fol­lows that, even in your pres­ent hu­man es­tate, if you can through grace be­come good, you are thereby be­com­ing great. The more stead­fastly you be­hold, and the more per­sis­tently you pur­sue, the con­cepts of di­vine good­ness, the more cer­tainly will you grow in great­ness, in true mag­ni­tude of gen­uine sur­vival char­ac­ter.

• defined as › fruit of the spirit

34:6.13The con­scious­ness of the spirit dom­i­na­tion of a hu­man life is pres­ently at­tended by an in­creas­ing ex­hi­bi­tion of the char­ac­ter­is­tics of the Spirit in the life re­ac­tions of such a spirit-led mor­tal, “for the fruits of the spirit are love, joy, peace, long-suf­fer­ing, gen­tle­ness, good­ness, faith, meek­ness, and tem­per­ance.” Such spirit-guided and di­vinely il­lu­mi­nated mor­tals, while they yet tread the lowly paths of toil and in hu­man faith­ful­ness per­form the du­ties of their earthly as­sign­ments, have al­ready be­gun to dis­cern the lights of eter­nal life as they glim­mer on the far­away shores of an­other world; al­ready have they be­gun to com­pre­hend the re­al­ity of that in­spir­ing and com­fort­ing truth, “The king­dom of God is not meat and drink but righ­teous­ness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit.” And through­out ev­ery trial and in the pres­ence of ev­ery hard­ship, spirit-born souls are sus­tained by that hope which tran­scends all fear be­cause the love of God is shed abroad in all hearts by the pres­ence of the di­vine Spirit.

• nature of goodness › unified with beauty, truth, righteousness

44:7.2Beauty, rhythm, and har­mony are in­tel­lec­tu­ally as­so­ci­ated and spir­i­tu­ally akin. Truth, fact, and re­la­tion­ship are in­tel­lec­tu­ally in­sep­a­ra­ble and as­so­ci­ated with the philo­sophic con­cepts of beauty. Good­ness, righ­teous­ness, and jus­tice are phil­o­soph­i­cally in­ter­re­lated and spir­i­tu­ally bound up to­gether with liv­ing truth and di­vine beauty.

44:7.3Cos­mic con­cepts of true phi­los­o­phy, the por­trayal of ce­les­tial artistry, or the mor­tal at­tempt to de­pict the hu­man rec­og­ni­tion of di­vine beauty can never be truly sat­is­fy­ing if such at­tempted crea­ture pro­gres­sion is un­uni­fied. These ex­pres­sions of the di­vine urge within the evolv­ing crea­ture may be in­tel­lec­tu­ally true, emo­tion­ally beau­ti­ful, and spir­i­tu­ally good; but the real soul of ex­pres­sion is ab­sent un­less these re­al­i­ties of truth, mean­ings of beauty, and val­ues of good­ness are uni­fied in the life ex­pe­ri­ence of the ar­ti­san, the sci­en­tist, or the philoso­pher.

44:7.4These di­vine qual­i­ties are per­fectly and ab­so­lutely uni­fied in God. And ev­ery God-know­ing man or an­gel pos­sesses the po­ten­tial of un­lim­ited self-ex­pres­sion on ever-pro­gres­sive lev­els of uni­fied self-re­al­iza­tion by the tech­nique of the never-end­ing achieve­ment of God­like­ness—the ex­pe­ri­en­tial blend­ing in the evo­lu­tion­ary ex­pe­ri­ence of eter­nal truth, uni­ver­sal beauty, and di­vine good­ness.

• all things work together for good

48:4.73. Pro­phetic joy. It will per­haps be dif­fi­cult for mor­tals to en­vis­age this phase of hu­mor, but we do get a pe­cu­liar sat­is­fac­tion out of the as­sur­ance “that all things work to­gether for good”—for spir­its and mor­ontians as well as for mor­tals. This as­pect of ce­les­tial hu­mor grows out of our faith in the lov­ing over­care of our su­pe­ri­ors and in the di­vine sta­bil­ity of our Su­preme Di­rec­tors.

• nature of goodness › act is potent in proportion to divinity of motivation
• nature of goodness › no good act ever wholly lost

48:6.7These se­raphic evan­gels are ded­i­cated to the procla­ma­tion of the gospel of eter­nal pro­gres­sion, the tri­umph of per­fec­tion at­tain­ment. On the man­sion worlds they pro­claim the great law of the con­ser­va­tion and dom­i­nance of good­ness: No act of good is ever wholly lost; it may be long thwarted but never wholly an­nulled, and it is eter­nally po­tent in pro­por­tion to the di­vin­ity of its mo­ti­va­tion.

• goodness of God › leads men into repentance

48:6.8Even on Uran­tia they coun­sel the hu­man teach­ers of truth and righ­teous­ness to ad­here to the preach­ing of “the good­ness of God, which leads to re­pen­tance,” to pro­claim “the love of God, which casts out all fear.” Even so have these truths been de­clared on your world:

• all things work together for good
• cannot come of evil to evildoer

54:4.7The mercy de­lays of time are by the man­date of the free will of the Cre­ators. There is good to be de­rived in the uni­verse from this tech­nique of pa­tience in deal­ing with sin­ful rebels. While it is all too true that good can­not come of evil to the one who con­tem­plates and per­forms evil, it is equally true that all things (in­clud­ing evil, po­ten­tial and man­i­fest) work to­gether for good to all be­ings who know God, love to do his will, and are as­cend­ing Par­adis­e­ward ac­cord­ing to his eter­nal plan and di­vine pur­pose.

• nature of goodness › g. may be derived from time-limited evil

54:6.6At first the Lu­cifer up­heaval ap­peared to be an un­mit­i­gated calamity to the sys­tem and to the uni­verse. Grad­u­ally ben­e­fits be­gan to ac­crue. With the pass­ing of twenty-five thou­sand years of sys­tem time (twenty thou­sand years of Uran­tia time), the Mel­chiz­e­deks be­gan to teach that the good re­sult­ing from Lu­cifer’s folly had come to equal the evil in­curred. The sum of evil had by that time be­come al­most sta­tion­ary, con­tin­u­ing to in­crease only on cer­tain iso­lated worlds, while the ben­e­fi­cial reper­cus­sions con­tin­ued to mul­ti­ply and ex­tend out through the uni­verse and super­uni­verse, even to Ha­vona. The Mel­chiz­e­deks now teach that the good re­sult­ing from the Sa­ta­nia re­bel­lion is more than a thou­sand times the sum of all the evil.

54:6.7But such an ex­traor­di­nary and benef­i­cent har­vest of wrong­do­ing could only be brought about by the wise, di­vine, and mer­ci­ful at­ti­tude of all of Lu­cifer’s su­pe­ri­ors, ex­tend­ing from the Con­stel­la­tion Fa­thers on Eden­tia to the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther on Par­a­dise. The pass­ing of time has en­hanced the con­se­quen­tial good to be de­rived from the Lu­cifer folly; and since the evil to be pe­nal­ized was quite fully de­vel­oped within a com­par­a­tively short time, it is ap­par­ent that the all-wise and farsee­ing uni­verse rulers would be cer­tain to ex­tend the time in which to reap in­creas­ingly ben­e­fi­cial re­sults. Re­gard­less of the many ad­di­tional rea­sons for de­lay­ing the ap­pre­hen­sion and ad­ju­di­ca­tion of the Sa­ta­nia rebels, this one gain would have been enough to ex­plain why these sin­ners were not sooner in­terned, and why they have not been ad­ju­di­cated and de­stroyed.

54:6.8Short­sighted and time-bound mor­tal minds should be slow to crit­i­cize the time de­lays of the farsee­ing and all-wise ad­min­is­tra­tors of uni­verse af­fairs.

54:6.9One er­ror of hu­man think­ing re­spect­ing these prob­lems con­sists in the idea that all evo­lu­tion­ary mor­tals on an evolv­ing planet would choose to en­ter upon the Par­a­dise ca­reer if sin had not cursed their world. The abil­ity to de­cline sur­vival does not date from the times of the Lu­cifer re­bel­lion. Mor­tal man has al­ways pos­sessed the en­dow­ment of free­will choice re­gard­ing the Par­a­dise ca­reer.

54:6.10As you as­cend in the sur­vival ex­pe­ri­ence, you will broaden your uni­verse con­cepts and ex­tend your hori­zon of mean­ings and val­ues; and thus will you be able the bet­ter to un­der­stand why such be­ings as Lu­cifer and Sa­tan are per­mit­ted to con­tinue in re­bel­lion. You will also bet­ter com­pre­hend how ul­ti­mate (if not im­me­di­ate) good can be de­rived from time-lim­ited evil. Af­ter you at­tain Par­a­dise, you will re­ally be en­light­ened and com­forted when you lis­ten to the super­aphic philoso­phers dis­cuss and ex­plain these pro­found prob­lems of uni­verse ad­just­ment. But even then, I doubt that you will be fully sat­is­fied in your own minds. At least I was not even when I had thus at­tained the acme of uni­verse phi­los­o­phy. I did not achieve a full com­pre­hen­sion of these com­plex­i­ties un­til af­ter I had been as­signed to ad­min­is­tra­tive du­ties in the super­uni­verse, where by ac­tual ex­pe­ri­ence I have ac­quired con­cep­tual ca­pac­ity ad­e­quate for the com­pre­hen­sion of such many-sided prob­lems in cos­mic eq­uity and spir­i­tual phi­los­o­phy. As you as­cend Par­adis­e­ward, you will in­creas­ingly learn that many prob­lem­atic fea­tures of uni­verse ad­min­is­tra­tion can only be com­pre­hended sub­se­quent to the ac­quire­ment of in­creased ex­pe­ri­en­tial ca­pac­ity and to the achieve­ment of en­hanced spir­i­tual in­sight. Cos­mic wis­dom is es­sen­tial to the un­der­stand­ing of cos­mic sit­u­a­tions.

• defined as › man’s effort to discern God in spirit

56:10.2Through­out this glo­ri­ous age the chief pur­suit of the ever-ad­vanc­ing mor­tals is the quest for a bet­ter un­der­stand­ing and a fuller re­al­iza­tion of the com­pre­hen­si­ble el­e­ments of De­ity—truth, beauty, and good­ness. This rep­re­sents man’s ef­fort to dis­cern God in mind, mat­ter, and spirit. And as the mor­tal pur­sues this quest, he finds him­self in­creas­ingly ab­sorbed in the ex­pe­ri­en­tial study of phi­los­o­phy, cos­mol­ogy, and di­vin­ity.

• defined as › revelation of Deity, infinite values

56:10.9The worlds set­tled in light and life are so fully con­cerned with the com­pre­hen­sion of truth, beauty, and good­ness be­cause these qual­ity val­ues em­brace the rev­e­la­tion of De­ity to the realms of time and space. The mean­ings of eter­nal truth make a com­bined ap­peal to the in­tel­lec­tual and spir­i­tual na­tures of mor­tal man. Uni­ver­sal beauty em­braces the har­mo­nious re­la­tions and rhythms of the cos­mic cre­ation; this is more dis­tinctly the in­tel­lec­tual ap­peal and leads to­wards uni­fied and syn­chronous com­pre­hen­sion of the ma­te­rial uni­verse. Di­vine good­ness rep­re­sents the rev­e­la­tion of in­fi­nite val­ues to the fi­nite mind, therein to be per­ceived and el­e­vated to the very thresh­old of the spir­i­tual level of hu­man com­pre­hen­sion.

56:10.10Truth is the ba­sis of sci­ence and phi­los­o­phy, pre­sent­ing the in­tel­lec­tual foun­da­tion of re­li­gion. Beauty spon­sors art, mu­sic, and the mean­ing­ful rhythms of all hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence. Good­ness em­braces the sense of ethics, moral­ity, and re­li­gion—ex­pe­ri­en­tial per­fec­tion-hunger.

• defined as › nearness to divinity
• nature of goodness › cannot be divorced from greatness

56:10.12Good­ness is the men­tal rec­og­ni­tion of the rel­a­tive val­ues of the di­verse lev­els of di­vine per­fec­tion. The rec­og­ni­tion of good­ness im­plies a mind of moral sta­tus, a per­sonal mind with abil­ity to dis­crim­i­nate be­tween good and evil. But the pos­ses­sion of good­ness, great­ness, is the mea­sure of real di­vin­ity at­tain­ment.

• defined as › shown in loving ministry of Father, Son, Spirit

56:10.17Uni­ver­sal beauty is the rec­og­ni­tion of the re­flec­tion of the Isle of Par­a­dise in the ma­te­rial cre­ation, while eter­nal truth is the spe­cial min­istry of the Par­a­dise Sons who not only be­stow them­selves upon the mor­tal races but even pour out their Spirit of Truth upon all peo­ples. Di­vine good­ness is more fully shown forth in the lov­ing min­istry of the man­i­fold per­son­al­i­ties of the In­fi­nite Spirit. But love, the sum to­tal of these three qual­i­ties, is man’s per­cep­tion of God as his spirit Fa­ther.

56:10.18Phys­i­cal mat­ter is the time-space shadow of the Par­a­dise en­ergy-shin­ing of the ab­so­lute De­i­ties. Truth mean­ings are the mor­tal-in­tel­lect reper­cus­sions of the eter­nal word of De­ity—the time-space com­pre­hen­sion of su­preme con­cepts. The good­ness val­ues of di­vin­ity are the mer­ci­ful min­istries of the spirit per­son­al­i­ties of the Uni­ver­sal, the Eter­nal, and the In­fi­nite to the time-space fi­nite crea­tures of the evo­lu­tion­ary spheres.

• all things work together for good

67:7.8While we can­not fathom the wis­dom that per­mits such catas­tro­phes, we can al­ways dis­cern the ben­e­fi­cial out­work­ing of these lo­cal dis­tur­bances as they are re­flected out upon the uni­verse at large.

• all things work together for good

67:8.4If the Lu­cifer re­bel­lion has hand­i­capped the lo­cal sys­tem and its fallen worlds, if the loss of this Son and his mis­led as­so­ciates has tem­porar­ily ham­pered the prog­ress of the con­stel­la­tion of Nor­la­ti­adek, then weigh the ef­fect of the far-flung pre­sen­ta­tion of the in­spir­ing per­for­mance of this one child of na­ture and his de­ter­mined band of 143 com­rades in stand­ing stead­fast for the higher con­cepts of uni­verse man­age­ment and ad­min­is­tra­tion in the face of such tremen­dous and ad­verse pres­sure ex­erted by his dis­loyal su­pe­ri­ors. And let me as­sure you, this has al­ready done more good in the uni­verse of Neb­a­don and the super­uni­verse of Or­von­ton than can ever be out­weighed by the sum to­tal of all the evil and sor­row of the Lu­cifer re­bel­lion.

• defined as › carrying out divine plans

75:4.3Eve had con­sented to par­tic­i­pate in the prac­tice of good and evil. Good is the car­ry­ing out of the di­vine plans; sin is a de­lib­er­ate trans­gres­sion of the di­vine will; evil is the mis­adap­ta­tion of plans and the mal­ad­just­ment of tech­niques re­sult­ing in uni­verse dishar­mony and plan­e­tary con­fu­sion.

• all things work together for good

94:6.4Lao-tse also made one of the ear­li­est pre­sen­ta­tions of the doc­trine of re­turn­ing good for evil: “Good­ness begets good­ness, but to the one who is truly good, evil also begets good­ness.”

• defined as › health of the soul

98:2.6Xeno­phanes taught one God, but his de­ity con­cept was too pan­the­is­tic to be a per­sonal Fa­ther to mor­tal man. Anaxago­ras was a mech­a­nist ex­cept that he did rec­og­nize a First Cause, an Ini­tial Mind. Socrates and his suc­ces­sors, Plato and Aris­to­tle, taught that virtue is knowl­edge; good­ness, health of the soul; that it is bet­ter to suf­fer in­jus­tice than to be guilty of it, that it is wrong to re­turn evil for evil, and that the gods are wise and good. Their car­di­nal virtues were: wis­dom, cour­age, tem­per­ance, and jus­tice.

• nature of goodness › human likes and dislikes do not determine g.

100:3.2To the re­li­gion­ist the word God be­comes a sym­bol sig­ni­fy­ing the ap­proach to su­preme re­al­ity and the rec­og­ni­tion of di­vine value. Hu­man likes and dis­likes do not de­ter­mine good and evil; moral val­ues do not grow out of wish ful­fill­ment or emo­tional frus­tra­tion.

• Jesus went about doing good

100:7.8He loved men as broth­ers, at the same time rec­og­niz­ing how they dif­fered in in­nate en­dow­ments and ac­quired qual­i­ties. “He went about do­ing good.”

• nature of goodness › cannot be divorced from greatness

100:7.17Je­sus was great be­cause he was good, and yet he frat­er­nized with the lit­tle chil­dren. He was gen­tle and unas­sum­ing in his per­sonal life, and yet he was the per­fected man of a uni­verse. His as­so­ciates called him Mas­ter un­bid­den.

• defined as › finite maximum of experience

102:3.15Sci­ence is only sat­is­fied with first causes, re­li­gion with su­preme per­son­al­ity, and phi­los­o­phy with unity. Rev­e­la­tion af­firms that these three are one, and that all are good. The eter­nal real is the good of the uni­verse and not the time il­lu­sions of space evil. In the spir­i­tual ex­pe­ri­ence of all per­son­al­i­ties, al­ways is it true that the real is the good and the good is the real.

• basing life on highest consciousness of

110:3.71. Choos­ing to re­spond to di­vine lead­ing; sin­cerely bas­ing the hu­man life on the high­est con­scious­ness of truth, beauty, and good­ness, and then co-or­di­nat­ing these qual­i­ties of di­vin­ity through wis­dom, wor­ship, faith, and love.

• defined as › value-realization of God-consciousness

111:3.7In so far as man’s evolv­ing mor­ontia soul be­comes per­me­ated by truth, beauty, and good­ness as the value-re­al­iza­tion of God-con­scious­ness, such a re­sul­tant be­ing be­comes in­de­struc­tible. If there is no sur­vival of eter­nal val­ues in the evolv­ing soul of man, then mor­tal ex­is­tence is with­out mean­ing, and life it­self is a tragic il­lu­sion. But it is for­ever true: What you be­gin in time you will as­suredly fin­ish in eter­nity—if it is worth fin­ish­ing.

• man’s understanding of g. only relatively true

115:1.2Con­cep­tual frames of the uni­verse are only rel­a­tively true; they are ser­vice­able scaf­fold­ing which must even­tu­ally give way be­fore the ex­pan­sions of en­larg­ing cos­mic com­pre­hen­sion. The un­der­stand­ings of truth, beauty, and good­ness, moral­ity, ethics, duty, love, di­vin­ity, ori­gin, ex­is­tence, pur­pose, des­tiny, time, space, even De­ity, are only rel­a­tively true. God is much, much more than a Fa­ther, but the Fa­ther is man’s high­est con­cept of God; nonethe­less, the Fa­ther-Son por­trayal of Cre­ator-crea­ture re­la­tion­ship will be aug­mented by those super­mor­tal con­cep­tions of De­ity which will be at­tained in Or­von­ton, in Ha­vona, and on Par­a­dise. Man must think in a mor­tal uni­verse frame, but that does not mean that he can­not en­vi­sion other and higher frames within which thought can take place.

• defined as › finite maximum of experience

117:1.7Truth, beauty, and good­ness are cor­re­lated in the min­istry of the Spirit, the grandeur of Par­a­dise, the mercy of the Son, and the ex­pe­ri­ence of the Su­preme. God the Su­preme is truth, beauty, and good­ness, for these con­cepts of di­vin­ity rep­re­sent fi­nite max­i­mums of ide­a­tional ex­pe­ri­ence. The eter­nal sources of these tri­une qual­i­ties of di­vin­ity are on super­fi­nite lev­els, but a crea­ture could only con­ceive of such sources as super­truth, super­beauty, and super­good­ness.

• all things work together for good

118:10.18To re­al­ize prov­i­dence in time, man must ac­com­plish the task of achiev­ing per­fec­tion. But man can even now fore­taste this prov­i­dence in its eter­nity mean­ings as he pon­ders the uni­verse fact that all things, be they good or evil, work to­gether for the ad­vance­ment of God-know­ing mor­tals in their quest for the Fa­ther of all.

• Jesus exalted g. by commanding performance

127:4.2By the be­gin­ning of this year Je­sus had fully won his mother to the ac­cep­tance of his meth­ods of child train­ing—the pos­i­tive in­junc­tion to do good in the place of the older Jew­ish method of for­bid­ding to do evil. In his home and through­out his pub­lic-teach­ing ca­reer Je­sus in­vari­ably em­ployed the pos­i­tive form of ex­hor­ta­tion. Al­ways and ev­ery­where did he say, “You shall do this—you ought to do that.” Never did he em­ploy the neg­a­tive mode of teach­ing de­rived from the an­cient taboos. He re­frained from plac­ing em­pha­sis on evil by for­bid­ding it, while he ex­alted the good by com­mand­ing its per­for­mance. Prayer time in this house­hold was the oc­ca­sion for dis­cussing any­thing and ev­ery­thing re­lat­ing to the wel­fare of the fam­ily.

• and evil

130:1.5Je­sus’ last visit with Ga­diah had to do with a dis­cus­sion of good and evil. This young Phil­is­tine was much trou­bled by a feel­ing of in­jus­tice be­cause of the pres­ence of evil in the world along­side the good. He said: “How can God, if he is in­finitely good, per­mit us to suf­fer the sor­rows of evil; af­ter all, who cre­ates evil?” It was still be­lieved by many in those days that God cre­ates both good and evil, but Je­sus never taught such er­ror. In an­swer­ing this ques­tion, Je­sus said: “My brother, God is love; there­fore he must be good, and his good­ness is so great and real that it can­not con­tain the small and un­real things of evil. God is so pos­i­tively good that there is ab­so­lutely no place in him for neg­a­tive evil. Evil is the im­ma­ture choos­ing and the un­think­ing mis­step of those who are re­sis­tant to good­ness, re­ject­ful of beauty, and dis­loyal to truth. Evil is only the mis­adap­ta­tion of im­ma­tu­rity or the dis­rup­tive and dis­tort­ing in­flu­ence of ig­no­rance. Evil is the in­ev­i­ta­ble dark­ness which fol­lows upon the heels of the un­wise re­jec­tion of light. Evil is that which is dark and un­true, and which, when con­sciously em­braced and will­fully en­dorsed, be­comes sin.

130:1.6“Your Fa­ther in heaven, by en­dow­ing you with the power to choose be­tween truth and er­ror, cre­ated the po­ten­tial neg­a­tive of the pos­i­tive way of light and life; but such er­rors of evil are re­ally nonex­is­tent un­til such a time as an in­tel­li­gent crea­ture wills their ex­is­tence by mischoos­ing the way of life. And then are such evils later ex­alted into sin by the know­ing and de­lib­er­ate choice of such a will­ful and re­bel­lious crea­ture. This is why our Fa­ther in heaven per­mits the good and the evil to go along to­gether un­til the end of life, just as na­ture al­lows the wheat and the tares to grow side by side un­til the har­vest.” Ga­diah was fully sat­is­fied with Je­sus’ an­swer to his ques­tion af­ter their sub­se­quent dis­cus­sion had made clear to his mind the real mean­ing of these mo­men­tous state­ments.

• goodness of God › beneficence to the righteous and the wicked

131:5.2“All things come from, and be­long to, the One God—all-wise, good, righ­teous, holy, re­splen­dent, and glo­ri­ous. This, our God, is the source of all lu­mi­nos­ity. He is the Cre­ator, the God of all good pur­poses, and the pro­tec­tor of the jus­tice of the uni­verse. The wise course in life is to act in con­so­nance with the spirit of truth. God is all-see­ing, and he be­holds both the evil deeds of the wicked and the good works of the righ­teous; our God ob­serves all things with a flash­ing eye. His touch is the touch of heal­ing. The Lord is an all-pow­er­ful bene­fac­tor. God stretches out his benef­i­cent hand to both the righ­teous and the wicked. God es­tab­lished the world and or­dained the re­wards for good and for evil. The all-wise God has prom­ised im­mor­tal­ity to the pi­ous souls who think purely and act righ­teously. As you su­premely de­sire, so shall you be. The light of the sun is as wis­dom to those who dis­cern God in the uni­verse.

• nature of goodness › blesses everything, harms nothing; seeks lowest places

131:8.3“All good works of true ser­vice come from the Su­preme. All things de­pend on the Great Source for life. The Great Su­preme seeks no credit for his be­stowals. He is su­preme in power, yet he re­mains hid­den from our gaze. He un­ceas­ingly trans­mutes his at­tri­butes while per­fect­ing his crea­tures. The heav­enly Rea­son is slow and pa­tient in his de­signs but sure of his ac­com­plish­ments. The Su­preme over­spreads the uni­verse and sus­tains it all. How great and mighty are his over­flow­ing in­flu­ence and draw­ing power! True good­ness is like wa­ter in that it blesses ev­ery­thing and harms noth­ing. And like wa­ter, true good­ness seeks the low­est places, even those lev­els which oth­ers avoid, and that is be­cause it is akin to the Su­preme. The Su­preme cre­ates all things, in na­ture nour­ish­ing them and in spirit per­fect­ing them. And it is a mys­tery how the Su­preme fos­ters, pro­tects, and per­fects the crea­ture with­out com­pelling him. He guides and di­rects, but with­out self-as­ser­tion. He min­is­ters pro­gres­sion, but with­out dom­i­na­tion.

• goodness of God › leads men into repentance

131:10.4“The Fa­ther in heaven will not suf­fer a sin­gle child on earth to per­ish if that child has a de­sire to find the Fa­ther and truly longs to be like him. Our Fa­ther even loves the wicked and is al­ways kind to the un­grate­ful. If more hu­man be­ings could only know about the good­ness of God, they would cer­tainly be led to re­pent of their evil ways and for­sake all known sin. All good things come down from the Fa­ther of light, in whom there is no vari­able­ness nei­ther shadow of chang­ing. The spirit of the true God is in man’s heart. He in­tends that all men should be broth­ers. When men be­gin to feel af­ter God, that is ev­i­dence that God has found them, and that they are in quest of knowl­edge about him. We live in God and God dwells in us.

132:2.1Mar­dus was the ac­knowl­edged leader of the Cyn­ics of Rome, and he be­came a great friend of the scribe of Da­mas­cus. Day af­ter day he con­versed with Je­sus, and night upon night he lis­tened to his su­per­nal teach­ing. Among the more im­por­tant dis­cus­sions with Mar­dus was the one de­signed to an­swer this sin­cere Cynic’s ques­tion about good and evil. In sub­stance, and in twen­ti­eth-cen­tury phrase­ol­ogy, Je­sus said:

132:2.2My brother, good and evil are merely words sym­bol­iz­ing rel­a­tive lev­els of hu­man com­pre­hen­sion of the ob­serv­able uni­verse. If you are eth­i­cally lazy and so­cially in­dif­fer­ent, you can take as your stan­dard of good the cur­rent so­cial us­ages. If you are spir­i­tu­ally in­do­lent and morally un­pro­gres­sive, you may take as your stan­dards of good the re­li­gious prac­tices and tra­di­tions of your con­tem­po­raries. But the soul that sur­vives time and emerges into eter­nity must make a liv­ing and per­sonal choice be­tween good and evil as they are de­ter­mined by the true val­ues of the spir­i­tual stan­dards es­tab­lished by the di­vine spirit which the Fa­ther in heaven has sent to dwell within the heart of man. This in­dwelling spirit is the stan­dard of per­son­al­ity sur­vival.

• defined as › living, relative, evil-contrasted, always a personal experience

132:2.3Good­ness, like truth, is al­ways rel­a­tive and un­fail­ingly evil-con­trasted. It is the per­cep­tion of these qual­i­ties of good­ness and truth that en­ables the evolv­ing souls of men to make those per­sonal de­ci­sions of choice which are es­sen­tial to eter­nal sur­vival.

132:2.4The spir­i­tu­ally blind in­di­vid­ual who log­i­cally fol­lows sci­en­tific dic­ta­tion, so­cial us­age, and re­li­gious dogma stands in grave dan­ger of sac­ri­fic­ing his moral free­dom and los­ing his spir­i­tual lib­erty. Such a soul is des­tined to be­come an in­tel­lec­tual par­rot, a so­cial au­toma­ton, and a slave to re­li­gious au­thor­ity.

132:2.5Good­ness is al­ways grow­ing to­ward new lev­els of the in­creas­ing lib­erty of moral self-re­al­iza­tion and spir­i­tual per­son­al­ity at­tain­ment—the dis­cov­ery of, and iden­ti­fi­ca­tion with, the in­dwelling Ad­juster. An ex­pe­ri­ence is good when it height­ens the ap­pre­ci­a­tion of beauty, aug­ments the moral will, en­hances the dis­cern­ment of truth, en­larges the ca­pac­ity to love and serve one’s fel­lows, ex­alts the spir­i­tual ide­als, and uni­fies the su­preme hu­man mo­tives of time with the eter­nal plans of the in­dwelling Ad­juster, all of which lead di­rectly to an in­creased de­sire to do the Fa­ther’s will, thereby fos­ter­ing the di­vine pas­sion to find God and to be more like him.

132:2.6As you as­cend the uni­verse scale of crea­ture de­vel­op­ment, you will find in­creas­ing good­ness and di­min­ish­ing evil in per­fect ac­cor­dance with your ca­pac­ity for good­ness-ex­pe­ri­ence and truth-dis­cern­ment. The abil­ity to en­ter­tain er­ror or ex­pe­ri­ence evil will not be fully lost un­til the as­cend­ing hu­man soul achieves fi­nal spirit lev­els.

132:2.7Good­ness is liv­ing, rel­a­tive, al­ways pro­gress­ing, in­vari­ably a per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence, and ev­er­last­ingly cor­re­lated with the dis­cern­ment of truth and beauty. Good­ness is found in the rec­og­ni­tion of the pos­i­tive truth-val­ues of the spir­i­tual level, which must, in hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence, be con­trasted with the neg­a­tive coun­ter­part—the shad­ows of po­ten­tial evil.

• more a quest than a possession

132:2.8Un­til you at­tain Par­a­dise lev­els, good­ness will al­ways be more of a quest than a pos­ses­sion, more of a goal than an ex­pe­ri­ence of at­tain­ment. But even as you hunger and thirst for righ­teous­ness, you ex­pe­ri­ence in­creas­ing sat­is­fac­tion in the par­tial at­tain­ment of good­ness. The pres­ence of good­ness and evil in the world is in it­self pos­i­tive proof of the ex­is­tence and re­al­ity of man’s moral will, the per­son­al­ity, which thus iden­ti­fies these val­ues and is also able to choose be­tween them.

132:2.9By the time of the at­tain­ment of Par­a­dise the as­cend­ing mor­tal’s ca­pac­ity for iden­ti­fy­ing the self with true spirit val­ues has be­come so en­larged as to re­sult in the at­tain­ment of the per­fec­tion of the pos­ses­sion of the light of life. Such a per­fected spirit per­son­al­ity be­comes so wholly, di­vinely, and spir­i­tu­ally uni­fied with the pos­i­tive and su­preme qual­i­ties of good­ness, beauty, and truth that there re­mains no pos­si­bil­ity that such a righ­teous spirit would cast any neg­a­tive shadow of po­ten­tial evil when ex­posed to the search­ing lu­mi­nos­ity of the di­vine light of the in­fi­nite Rulers of Par­a­dise. In all such spirit per­son­al­i­ties, good­ness is no longer par­tial, con­trastive, and com­par­a­tive; it has be­come di­vinely com­plete and spir­i­tu­ally re­plete; it ap­proaches the pu­rity and per­fec­tion of the Su­preme.

132:2.10The pos­si­bil­ity of evil is nec­es­sary to moral choos­ing, but not the ac­tu­al­ity thereof. A shadow is only rel­a­tively real. Ac­tual evil is not nec­es­sary as a per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence. Po­ten­tial evil acts equally well as a de­ci­sion stim­u­lus in the realms of moral prog­ress on the lower lev­els of spir­i­tual de­vel­op­ment. Evil be­comes a re­al­ity of per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence only when a moral mind makes evil its choice.

• return good for evil

140:3.15“I say to you: Love your en­e­mies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, and pray for those who de­spite­fully use you. And what­so­ever you be­lieve that I would do to men, do you also to them.

• return good for evil

140:6.9Then asked Na­than­iel: “Mas­ter, shall we give no place to jus­tice? The law of Moses says, ‘An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.’ What shall we say?” And Je­sus an­swered: “You shall re­turn good for evil. My mes­sen­gers must not strive with men, but be gen­tle to­ward all. Mea­sure for mea­sure shall not be your rule. The rulers of men may have such laws, but not so in the king­dom; mercy al­ways shall de­ter­mine your judg­ments and love your con­duct. And if these are hard say­ings, you can even now turn back. If you find the re­quire­ments of apos­tle­ship too hard, you may re­turn to the less rig­or­ous path­way of dis­ci­ple­ship.”

• indiscriminate kindness causes many social evils

140:8.13He made it clear that in­dis­crim­i­nate kind­ness may be blamed for many so­cial evils. The fol­low­ing day Je­sus def­i­nitely in­structed Ju­das that no apos­tolic funds were to be given out as alms ex­cept upon his re­quest or upon the joint pe­ti­tion of two of the apos­tles. In all these mat­ters it was the prac­tice of Je­sus al­ways to say, “Be as wise as ser­pents but as harm­less as doves.” It seemed to be his pur­pose in all so­cial sit­u­a­tions to teach pa­tience, tol­er­ance, and for­give­ness.

• nature of goodness › highest forms of g. are unconscious

140:8.26Je­sus knew men were dif­fer­ent, and he so taught his apos­tles. He con­stantly ex­horted them to re­frain from try­ing to mold the dis­ci­ples and be­liev­ers ac­cord­ing to some set pat­tern. He sought to al­low each soul to de­velop in its own way, a per­fect­ing and sep­a­rate in­di­vid­ual be­fore God. In an­swer to one of Pe­ter’s many ques­tions, the Mas­ter said: “I want to set men free so that they can start out afresh as lit­tle chil­dren upon the new and bet­ter life.” Je­sus al­ways in­sisted that true good­ness must be un­con­scious, in be­stow­ing char­ity not al­low­ing the left hand to know what the right hand does.

• goodness of God › leads men into repentance

143:2.7“Your son­ship is grounded in faith, and you are to re­main un­moved by fear. Your joy is born of trust in the di­vine word, and you shall not there­fore be led to doubt the re­al­ity of the Fa­ther’s love and mercy. It is the very good­ness of God that leads men into true and gen­uine re­pen­tance. Your se­cret of the mas­tery of self is bound up with your faith in the in­dwelling spirit, which ever works by love. Even this sav­ing faith you have not of your­selves; it also is the gift of God. And if you are the chil­dren of this liv­ing faith, you are no longer the bond­slaves of self but rather the tri­umphant mas­ters of your­selves, the lib­er­ated sons of God.

• goodness of God › leads men into repentance

149:6.4“In­tel­li­gent chil­dren do not fear their fa­ther in or­der that they may re­ceive good gifts from his hand; but hav­ing al­ready re­ceived the abun­dance of good things be­stowed by the dic­tates of the fa­ther’s af­fec­tion for his sons and daugh­ters, these much loved chil­dren are led to love their fa­ther in re­spon­sive rec­og­ni­tion and ap­pre­ci­a­tion of such mu­nif­i­cent benef­i­cence. The good­ness of God leads to re­pen­tance; the benef­i­cence of God leads to ser­vice; the mercy of God leads to sal­va­tion; while the love of God leads to in­tel­li­gent and free­hearted wor­ship.

• and evil
• Jesus went about doing good

159:5.10Je­sus did not ad­vo­cate the prac­tice of neg­a­tive sub­mis­sion to the in­dig­ni­ties of those who might pur­posely seek to im­pose upon the prac­ti­tion­ers of non­re­sis­tance to evil, but rather that his fol­low­ers should be wise and alert in the quick and pos­i­tive re­ac­tion of good to evil to the end that they might ef­fec­tively over­come evil with good. For­get not, the truly good is in­vari­ably more pow­er­ful than the most ma­lig­nant evil. The Mas­ter taught a pos­i­tive stan­dard of righ­teous­ness: “Whoso­ever wishes to be my dis­ci­ple, let him dis­re­gard him­self and take up the full mea­sure of his re­spon­si­bil­i­ties daily to fol­low me.” And he so lived him­self in that “he went about do­ing good.” And this as­pect of the gospel was well il­lus­trated by many para­bles which he later spoke to his fol­low­ers. He never ex­horted his fol­low­ers pa­tiently to bear their obli­ga­tions but rather with en­ergy and en­thu­si­asm to live up to the full mea­sure of their hu­man re­spon­si­bil­i­ties and di­vine priv­i­leges in the king­dom of God.

• nature of goodness › highest forms of g. are unconscious

170:3.9The righ­teous­ness of any act must be mea­sured by the mo­tive; the high­est forms of good are there­fore un­con­scious. Je­sus was never con­cerned with morals or ethics as such. He was wholly con­cerned with that in­ward and spir­i­tual fel­low­ship with God the Fa­ther which so cer­tainly and di­rectly man­i­fests it­self as out­ward and lov­ing ser­vice for man. He taught that the re­li­gion of the king­dom is a gen­uine per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence which no man can con­tain within him­self; that the con­scious­ness of be­ing a mem­ber of the fam­ily of be­liev­ers leads in­evitably to the prac­tice of the pre­cepts of the fam­ily con­duct, the ser­vice of one’s broth­ers and sis­ters in the ef­fort to en­hance and en­large the broth­er­hood.

• nature of goodness › when devoid of grace, g. often repels

171:7.2Good­ness al­ways com­pels re­spect, but when it is de­void of grace, it of­ten re­pels af­fec­tion. Good­ness is uni­ver­sally at­trac­tive only when it is gra­cious. Good­ness is ef­fec­tive only when it is at­trac­tive.

• Jesus went about doing good

171:7.9Most of the re­ally im­por­tant things which Je­sus said or did seemed to hap­pen ca­su­ally, “as he passed by.” There was so lit­tle of the pro­fes­sional, the well-planned, or the pre­med­i­tated in the Mas­ter’s earthly min­istry. He dis­pensed health and scat­tered hap­pi­ness nat­u­rally and grace­fully as he jour­neyed through life. It was lit­er­ally true, “He went about do­ing good.”

• all things work together for good

182:2.1The apos­tles were greatly shocked when they re­turned to their camp and found Ju­das ab­sent. While the eleven were en­gaged in a heated dis­cus­sion of their traitorous fel­low apos­tle, David Zeb­e­dee and John Mark took Je­sus to one side and re­vealed that they had kept Ju­das un­der ob­ser­va­tion for sev­eral days, and that they knew he in­tended to be­tray him into the hands of his en­e­mies. Je­sus lis­tened to them but only said: “My friends, noth­ing can hap­pen to the Son of Man un­less the Fa­ther in heaven so wills. Let not your hearts be trou­bled; all things will work to­gether for the glory of God and the sal­va­tion of men.”

• nature of goodness › destroys evil

188:5.2The cross for­ever shows that the at­ti­tude of Je­sus to­ward sin­ners was nei­ther con­dem­na­tion nor con­do­na­tion, but rather eter­nal and lov­ing sal­va­tion. Je­sus is truly a sav­ior in the sense that his life and death do win men over to good­ness and righ­teous sur­vival. Je­sus loves men so much that his love awak­ens the re­sponse of love in the hu­man heart. Love is truly con­ta­gious and eter­nally cre­ative. Je­sus’ death on the cross ex­em­pli­fies a love which is suf­fi­ciently strong and di­vine to for­give sin and swal­low up all evil-do­ing. Je­sus dis­closed to this world a higher qual­ity of righ­teous­ness than jus­tice—mere tech­ni­cal right and wrong. Di­vine love does not merely for­give wrongs; it ab­sorbs and ac­tu­ally de­stroys them. The for­give­ness of love ut­terly tran­scends the for­give­ness of mercy. Mercy sets the guilt of evil-do­ing to one side; but love de­stroys for­ever the sin and all weak­ness re­sult­ing there­from. Je­sus brought a new method of liv­ing to Uran­tia. He taught us not to re­sist evil but to find through him a good­ness which ef­fec­tu­ally de­stroys evil. The for­give­ness of Je­sus is not con­do­na­tion; it is sal­va­tion from con­dem­na­tion. Sal­va­tion does not slight wrongs; it makes them right. True love does not com­pro­mise nor con­done hate; it de­stroys it. The love of Je­sus is never sat­is­fied with mere for­give­ness. The Mas­ter’s love im­plies re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion, eter­nal sur­vival. It is al­to­gether proper to speak of sal­va­tion as re­demp­tion if you mean this eter­nal re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion.

• defined as › fruit of the spirit

193:2.2“Peace be upon you. You re­joice to know that the Son of Man has risen from the dead be­cause you thereby know that you and your breth­ren shall also sur­vive mor­tal death. But such sur­vival is de­pen­dent on your hav­ing been pre­vi­ously born of the spirit of truth-seek­ing and God-find­ing. The bread of life and the wa­ter thereof are given only to those who hunger for truth and thirst for righ­teous­ness—for God. The fact that the dead rise is not the gospel of the king­dom. These great truths and these uni­verse facts are all re­lated to this gospel in that they are a part of the re­sult of be­liev­ing the good news and are em­braced in the sub­se­quent ex­pe­ri­ence of those who, by faith, be­come, in deed and in truth, the ev­er­last­ing sons of the eter­nal God. My Fa­ther sent me into the world to pro­claim this sal­va­tion of son­ship to all men. And so send I you abroad to preach this sal­va­tion of son­ship. Sal­va­tion is the free gift of God, but those who are born of the spirit will im­me­di­ately be­gin to show forth the fruits of the spirit in lov­ing ser­vice to their fel­low crea­tures. And the fruits of the di­vine spirit which are yielded in the lives of spirit-born and God-know­ing mor­tals are: lov­ing ser­vice, un­selfish de­vo­tion, coura­geous loy­alty, sin­cere fair­ness, en­light­ened hon­esty, undy­ing hope, con­fid­ing trust, mer­ci­ful min­istry, un­fail­ing good­ness, for­giv­ing tol­er­ance, and en­dur­ing peace. If pro­fessed be­liev­ers bear not these fruits of the di­vine spirit in their lives, they are dead; the Spirit of Truth is not in them; they are use­less branches on the liv­ing vine, and they soon will be taken away. My Fa­ther re­quires of the chil­dren of faith that they bear much spirit fruit. If, there­fore, you are not fruit­ful, he will dig about your roots and cut away your un­fruit­ful branches. In­creas­ingly, must you yield the fruits of the spirit as you pro­gress heav­en­ward in the king­dom of God. You may en­ter the king­dom as a child, but the Fa­ther re­quires that you grow up, by grace, to the full stature of spir­i­tual adult­hood. And when you go abroad to tell all na­tions the good news of this gospel, I will go be­fore you, and my Spirit of Truth shall abide in your hearts. My peace I leave with you.”

• concept not inherent in physics

195:6.11To say that mind “emerged” from mat­ter ex­plains noth­ing. If the uni­verse were merely a mech­a­nism and mind were un­a­part from mat­ter, we would never have two dif­fer­ing in­ter­pre­ta­tions of any ob­served phe­nom­e­non. The con­cepts of truth, beauty, and good­ness are not in­her­ent in ei­ther physics or chem­istry. A ma­chine can­not know, much less know truth, hunger for righ­teous­ness, and cher­ish good­ness.

• sincere pursuit of g. leads to God

195:6.17The sin­cere pur­suit of good­ness, beauty, and truth leads to God. And ev­ery sci­en­tific dis­cov­ery demon­strates the ex­is­tence of both free­dom and uni­for­mity in the uni­verse. The dis­cov­erer was free to make the dis­cov­ery. The thing dis­cov­ered is real and ap­par­ently uni­form, or else it could not have be­come known as a thing.

• none is good but God

196:0.9The Mas­ter’s en­tire life was con­sis­tently con­di­tioned by this liv­ing faith, this sub­lime re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence. This spir­i­tual at­ti­tude wholly dom­i­nated his think­ing and feel­ing, his be­liev­ing and pray­ing, his teach­ing and preach­ing. This per­sonal faith of a son in the cer­tainty and se­cu­rity of the guid­ance and pro­tec­tion of the heav­enly Fa­ther im­parted to his unique life a pro­found en­dow­ment of spir­i­tual re­al­ity. And yet, de­spite this very deep con­scious­ness of close re­la­tion­ship with di­vin­ity, this Galilean, God’s Galilean, when ad­dressed as Good Teacher, in­stantly replied, “Why do you call me good?” When we stand con­fronted by such splen­did self-for­get­ful­ness, we be­gin to un­der­stand how the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther found it pos­si­ble so fully to man­i­fest him­self to him and re­veal him­self through him to the mor­tals of the realms.

• none is good but God

196:2.2Je­sus’ life in the flesh por­trays a tran­scen­dent re­li­gious growth from the early ideas of prim­i­tive awe and hu­man rev­er­ence up through years of per­sonal spir­i­tual com­mu­nion un­til he fi­nally ar­rived at that ad­vanced and ex­alted sta­tus of the con­scious­ness of his one­ness with the Fa­ther. And thus, in one short life, did Je­sus tra­verse that ex­pe­ri­ence of re­li­gious spir­i­tual pro­gres­sion which man be­gins on earth and or­di­nar­ily achieves only at the con­clu­sion of his long so­journ in the spirit train­ing schools of the suc­ces­sive lev­els of the pre-Par­a­dise ca­reer. Je­sus pro­gressed from a purely hu­man con­scious­ness of the faith cer­tain­ties of per­sonal re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence to the sub­lime spir­i­tual heights of the pos­i­tive re­al­iza­tion of his di­vine na­ture and to the con­scious­ness of his close as­so­ci­a­tion with the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther in the man­age­ment of a uni­verse. He pro­gressed from the hum­ble sta­tus of mor­tal de­pen­dence which prompted him spon­ta­neously to say to the one who called him Good Teacher, “Why do you call me good? None is good but God,” to that sub­lime con­scious­ness of achieved di­vin­ity which led him to ex­claim, “Which one of you con­victs me of sin?” And this pro­gress­ing as­cent from the hu­man to the di­vine was an ex­clu­sively mor­tal achieve­ment. And when he had thus at­tained di­vin­ity, he was still the same hu­man Je­sus, the Son of Man as well as the Son of God.

• attempted service of g. no substitute for religious experience

196:3.23The ide­al­iza­tion and at­tempted ser­vice of truth, beauty, and good­ness is not a sub­sti­tute for gen­uine re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence—spir­i­tual re­al­ity. Psy­chol­ogy and ide­al­ism are not the equiv­a­lent of re­li­gious re­al­ity. The pro­jec­tions of the hu­man in­tel­lect may in­deed orig­i­nate false gods—gods in man’s im­age—but the true God-con­scious­ness does not have such an ori­gin. The God-con­scious­ness is res­i­dent in the in­dwelling spirit. Many of the re­li­gious sys­tems of man come from the for­mu­la­tions of the hu­man in­tel­lect, but the God-con­scious­ness is not nec­es­sar­ily a part of these grotesque sys­tems of re­li­gious slav­ery.