The name “God” stands for all those qualities in the world and in ourselves which our religious tradition labels as divine, that is, as comprising full human spiritual development, fashioning Man into what he is at his best and most fully realized. If Truth, Justice, Mercy, Generosity, Love are among the things we need to be genuine human beings, to be, in the Biblical phrase, men “in God’s image”, then the name “God” stands for the existence of these qualities in the world and the existence of a corresponding impulse toward them in every human soul…Belief in God means believing that the universe has order and direction, that it encourages human goodness and moral growth and that the impulse each of us feels to be a good person is a reflection of the purposefulness existing in the cosmos at large.
— Harold S. Kushner, When Children ask about God
(New York: Schocken, 1989) pp.16-17.
(New York: Schocken, 1989) pp.16-17.
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