God is good to all
A Christian Science perspective: Does God love everyone?
Children sometimes ask their parents, “Which one of us do you love the most?” Usually the parents’ reassuring answer is, “We love all of you children with the same love.” What about the larger family of man? Does God, man’s divine Parent, love all of us?
There is much evidence in the Bible to show that God’s love is universal and impartial. A verse from Psalms says it simply: “The Lord is good to all: and his tender mercies are over all his works” (145:9).
Does it seem too much to expect that God cherishes each of His children equally, at all times? Truly it would be an impossibility if God were human, or even superhuman. And isn’t that sometimes the way we find ourselves thinking about God – as a great human being trying to keep watch over millions of people? But the Bible, particularly in the life of Christ Jesus, portrays a different picture of Deity. There, God is revealed not as a limited being but as Love, divine and infinite.
For infinite Love, God, loving all His creation is completely natural. The highest expression of God’s love is that He has made man to be the likeness of Himself. You and I, the people we cherish, and the people we don’t even know, are loved because we are, in reality, His creation, wholly spiritual and the object of God’s love.
Sometimes we might feel far from worthy of this abundant love that God has for us. But even during times when we’re discontented with ourselves, we can take heart because God does not see us as less lovable than someone else. Of course, if we are used to thinking of ourselves as sometimes worthy of love and sometimes not, it would be very hard to understand God’s impartiality in His treatment of man. Such a mistaken mortal perception is unable to see the immortal, spiritual nature of man that is God’s likeness and our genuine selfhood. But over and over again Christ Jesus demonstrated through the healing he did that we are worthy, because the man created by God is not a mistake-prone mortal. When we begin to perceive man as never separated from the Love that is God, we become increasingly aware of our own spiritual identity and of the ever-present care that our Father gives us all.
Once I was worried about a relative who was going through a difficult experience. Since I was not able to be in contact with this person, I turned to prayer to diminish my fears for her. I found reassurance in a statement by Christ Jesus. He said, God “maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust” (Matthew 5:45).
That statement seemed the ultimate affirmation that God is good and sends only good to all. Certainly God, divine Love, could take care of my relative whether I was able to be with her or not. And any evil circumstance or unjust situation she was facing could be overcome through the healing influence of divine Love in her life.
In time, my relative was able to go forward with her life. From that experience I’ve found a growing confidence that everyone is sheltered in God’s infinite presence. As the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, Mary Baker Eddy, writes in “Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures”: “In divine Science, where prayers are mental, all may avail themselves of God as ‘a very present help in trouble.’ Love is impartial and universal in its adaptation and bestowals. It is the open fount which cries, ‘Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters’ ” (p. 12).
God cares for each of us better than even the best human parent. As we discover what it is to be the offspring of divine Love, we can trust ourselves, our family, and our world to the infinite goodness of God.
Reprinted from the June 26, 1991, issue of The Christian Science Monitor.