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Being Good For Goodness’ Sake
Do you know what goodness is?
I would be willing to bet that everyone in my life fancies themself as someone who pursues goodness in life.
Goodness is a universal concept. There are words expressing both good and its antonym bad in every language on Earth.
Goodness is simply the conduct that one should prefer when given a choice between possible actions.
No religion has a monopoly on goodness.
It is certainly not an exclusive Judeo-Christian value, as some might argue.
We know this because there is a good bit of secular writing on the matter from Plato, a Greek philosopher who had no idea the Jewish people or their God even existed.
In fact, the Jewish people derived a good bit of their own philosophy on good versus bad from the Persians while in captivity. This was prior to the Torah even being written down in its present form.
It is safe to say that humans have been philosophizing and battling over good and bad since the beginning of recorded human history.
Speaking of human history, how long is that?
Humans, as in homo sapiens can be definitively traced back as far as 200,000 B.C. in the Horn of Africa…
