Q&A: Why Is the Holy One Blessed Be He Considered Good
Why Is the Holy One Blessed Be He Considered Good
Question
Hello Rabbi,
I have a question: why do people want to say (both philosophers and the Sages)
that the Holy One Blessed Be He must necessarily be good? (I saw that some say that being perfect means being good, but I did not understand exactly what they mean.)
Thanks in advance!
Answer
It is commonly thought that being good is one of the perfections, and therefore it must be present in God. One could also ask why we assume that He is perfect. That already takes us back to the ontological proof (see the first notebook on the site).
But beyond philosophical considerations, there are sources from prophecy, such as: “The Lord is good to all, and His mercies are over all His works.” Beyond that, He demands of us that we be good, so it is reasonable to assume that this matters to Him.
In my humble opinion, ostensibly we encounter the Lord as good because we encounter the Lord through His creating us; the Lord is the giver of life, and the idea of “good” is someone who grants life to another (money to a poor person and the like). All the more so when it comes to the very granting of life itself, which shows that the giver is good.