God's Goodness
“…the serpent implies that God has lied to Eve out of fear and jealousy to prevent her from acquiring the knowledge she desires—a knowledge which will make her godlike. In other words, he implies that it is a good thing to want to be godlike, so she should seize any means of attaining that—even though in his interpretation God is not a good God Who loves mankind. This becomes the archetypal lie about reality.” (Dr. Mary S. Ford)
“God is a good God and He loves mankind…This good God who loves mankind is not an angry God. He is not a vengeful God. He does not will us harm or punish us for our destruction.” (Orthodox Dismissal, Father Stephen Freeman)
“…whatever God does with us, He does it out of love. The God of Christians is a good God, a God of mercy and lovingkindness, ‘Who loveth mankind’. God created us out of His goodness in order to share His life and even His glory with us. When we fell into sin, He allowed death to enter our life again out of goodness, so that we may not become immortal in our wickedness, but to seek for a way of salvation. Although we have fallen, God has never stopped to provide for us, not only material goods in order to sustain our race, but He also sent prophets and righteous, preparing His way so that He might come and solve our tragedy, and bring eternal salvation through the Cross and Resurrection of His inconceivable love. He came and took upon Himself the curse of sin, and He showed His love to the end: ‘Having loved His own which were in the world, He loved them unto the end’ (John 13:1).” (Archimandrite Zacharias Zacharou)
“…thinking of everyone as Christ, seeing the image of God in your neighbor who has many obvious faults and who perhaps treats you badly; seeing that difficulties can be, and are intended by God to be, blessings and helps in our spiritual lives; seeing all the evil in the world and realizing that God is actually a good God Who loves mankind—all this requires seeing more than just the surface level of things. It requires judging “not according to appearances,” for things are not always as they appear on the surface. Indeed, true reality very often is not as it appears on the surface…The truth is that God is constantly revealing Himself to everyone, all the time—He is, after all, reality itself. It’s just that we are unable to see Him fully, correctly, or even at all, to the extent that our ability to see reality is clouded. It’s not that God is hidden; it’s that we are blind. Another of way of putting it is that we can encounter reality only to the extent that we ourselves are real.” (Dr. Mary S. Ford, Dr. Zachary Porcu)
“God is the master of our destiny and the ruler of our all that happens to us…The God who governs all is a “good God who loves mankind”…The Almighty does not rule over all things by brute and insensitive force but by His Providence. He orders all things by His everlasting love And He directs all that happens with care. Therefore, though we do not know what is on the horizon, we can know that the Lord is guiding our ship to a far better destination than we could devise.” (Fr. Basil)
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