Pure Goodness

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Pure Goodness

                One day last school year, one of my teachers wrote a question on the board and had us write and answer it for about ten minutes at the beginning of class.  This was the question:  “Do you believe that anybody is all good or all bad?  Why or why not?”  For the first split-second, I quickly realized that the preferred answer of society would be:  No, no one is perfect, and no one is completely evil.  However, I then quickly realized that yes; of course there are people like that.  Have you ever heard of Jesus?  There are few people (or beings) like this, but they should not be overlooked.

                As I mentioned before, the first person I thought of was Jesus.  Jesus was God in the human form, and God is all good.  Therefore, Jesus and God are two people that are without a doubt all good.  Also, it says in the Bible that Mary, the mother of God, was sinless, and that was why she was chosen to give birth to Jesus.  On the other end of the spectrum, the obvious person that is all bad is Lucifer, the fallen angel, Satin, the devil, or whatever else you prefer to call him.  He is the source of all evil in the world and anywhere else, and he is not good in any way.  At the end of days, he will disguise himself as a perfectly good human (the Antichrist), who has all the answers to the world and is on the same level as Jesus, and anyone that follows him instead of Jesus will go to Hell.  These are just my religious beliefs, but I also believe that the gods of all religions are the same being.  Therefore, I believe that God, Allah, Brahman, and the Supreme Being in all other religions are the same thing.  That Supreme Being is all good, and the devil of every religion is also the same being, and is all bad.  These are the only people that are undoubtedly all good or all bad.  Beyond them, I do not know for sure.  However, I know some people that, if they are not all good or all bad, then they are very close. 

                On the good side, the first person that comes to my mind is Pope John Paul II.  He is widely regarded as one of the best examples of a true Christian, and just a truly good person.  He dedicated his life to the service of others, and I am unaware of anything that he ever did wrong.  Another example is Mahatma Gandhi, who successfully used nonviolence to drive England out of India, and fasted for arguably impossible amounts of time.  He is another one of these perfect or near perfect persons, but in another area of the world.  I know hardly anything about the Islamic prophet Muhammad, but I imagine he was probably very comparable to these people.  Yet another person I can think of is Mother Theresa, who travelled the world doing good things for all kinds of people, and she will certainly be ordained as a saint within the next few decades.

                On the bad side, besides the devil, I could think of fewer people that I think are all bad, or very close.  The first people are the 9/11 terrorists, and Osama Bin Laden.  I believe that no matter how nuts you are, you could not possibly misunderstand a holy text so badly that you find it acceptable to violently kill huge amounts of people for no real reason.  In the play Macbeth by Shakespeare, Macbeth and Lady Macbeth are shown to be not all bad, as they felt extreme guilt during and after their murder of the king for their own benefit.  I don’t believe that Osama Bin Laden or a majority of the suicide bombers feel any guilt for what they do, and for this I believe they are purely evil.  They say they are doing it because Allah wants them to, but I think that they were created by the devil to try to turn people away from Allah (or God, or Brahman, or whatever).  I don’t believe that Adolf Hitler was all evil.  I believe that during WWII and at the end of his life he was very close, but I think that earlier in his life he had some good intentions, such as bringing honor and goodness to his country.

                In my opinion, there are far more people that are all good than all bad, and this is because God (Allah, Jehovah, Brahman, etc.) is stronger than the devil because of his people, and despite Satin’s constant attempts, good always prevails in the end. 

                In conclusion, the answer to the original question is yes.  There are a few people that are all good or all bad.  There are also people that are very close, and then a little less close, probably distributed in a normal curve.  This is the first time I have ever thought of it like that, but it might be how it is.  However, most people have some mix of good and evil, and that is generally one of the trademarks of being human.