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What is the difference between goodness and holiness?

According mostly to the Google AI overview:

Goodness emphasizes moral virtue, kindness, and helpful acts toward others.

Holiness involves being set apart, consecrated, and specially devoted to or belonging to the Lord.

While goodness describes ethical behavior in human relationships, holiness pertains to a transcendent, sacred alignment with the divine.

Defining Goodness

Moral action: practicing kindness, charity, fairness, and generosity toward people.

Universal reach: everyone, regardless of religious belief, can live a good and virtuous life.

Horizontal focus: concerned with how we treat our neighbors and the world around us.

Defining Holiness

Set apart: being separated from common or profane things for a sacred purpose.

Divine purity: the complete state of being fully holy, unmixed, and free from any evil or external corruption.

Vertical focus: rooted primarily in an intimate attachment, devotion, and alignment with the Holy Spirit and the Lord.

Key Contrasts

A person can demonstrate practical goodness without pursuing a religious or holy life.

Holiness includes goodness but also involves a sacred identity, divine awe, and spiritual dedication.

Why is it important to explore the differences between goodness and holiness?

Those who do not believe typically do not seek, ask, or knock beyond what is mundane, good or bad, but not what is holy or unholy.*

Unbelievers often fail to see beyond earthly values because their hearts and minds are closed to the divine.

The same applies to believers: if a person never questions or doubts inconsistencies in truth and faith, then human mistranslations of divine will will go uncorrected and misunderstood, and further understanding the difference between the Old Testament and the New will remain elusive.

Do we ask which religion is correct or which is more holy?

Or do we ask which religion is wrong or which is more unholy?

Religious wars have been waged on such questions. However, the latter part of these questions is seldom asked, seen, or pondered.

If only people would put their faith where their beliefs are and prove which religion is more holy or less through deeds, miracles, spiritual practices, dedication, and purity of heart.

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* "Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened." - Matthew 7:7-8

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Compassion and kindness are not weaknesses; they are essential and integral parts of our character and the Fruit of the Spirit (love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control). 

Ruthlessness, however, is a major weakness.

According to Google AI Overview:

Ruthlessness is often a weakness because it destroys long-term trust, alienates allies, and hampers cooperation.

While it might bring short-term gains (deceptive in its instant gratification), a complete lack of empathy or compassion isolates individuals, invites heavy retaliation, and blocks the collaborative networks necessary for sustainable success.

Social and Strategic Costs:

Destroys Trust: People won’t confide in, depend on, or invest in someone who views others as disposable.

Invites Retaliation: Treating people badly creates enemies who wait for an opportunity to strike back.

Limits Innovation: Fear-driven environments suppress honest feedback, as people hide mistakes to avoid harsh punishment.

Psychological and Emotional Flaws:

Ego-Driven Reaction: Philosophers noted that cruelty and harshness come from poor emotional control, showing inner fear rather than true strength.

Socrates, for example, saw ruthlessness as a serious moral failure and an indicator of extreme ignorance. In dialogues like Plato's Gorgias, he argued that doing injustice is far worse than suffering it, and that a ruthless person fundamentally harms their own soul. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]

Blocks Adaptation: Empathy is needed to understand opponents and social dynamics; ignoring feelings creates strategy blind spots.

Isolating: A rigid, transactional view of the world prevents deep and meaningful connections with others.

Note:

It is impossible to be completely heartless and wise at the same time. 

As mortals, we are born with a conscience and a heart; removing them entirely would be unnatural, implausible, soulless, and unwise.  

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What can I say in that moment of attack to dissuade the years, nay centuries, of grooming by the powers that be, now played and corrupted by adversaries hell-bent on foolish conquests?  

What goes through their powerfully ignorant and grandiose minds, where extreme measures of ruthlessness are applied to nice, gentle souls, all for the sake of greed and lust for power and control?

Would it shock you to know who was behind all the grooming and abuses, masked behind priestly collars and grabs of pure white, egged on by adversaries? 

The dismay, the horror I felt there in that moment where minds, hearts, and souls were lost to them, to those Peter Pipers of lies, fraud, and false promises and myths.  

Could I, but blame those lost? Perhaps it would have lessened the cost, but alas, who can blame those standing upon years of shame in the crying game, desperate to escape fear and secure what was near and dear?

Who's to say what is actually in their hearts and minds, especially those full of hate, malice, malcontent, and fear?  

What can I say to those who rely on these false myths for security to conceal their insecurities and incompetencies?

If those myths of harm were not so lethal in harm, so damning in hatred, I would have long since turned away.  

Yet the horror and dismay remain, as are their deathly fall from grace; such dishonor, ignorance, and shame!

The embarrassment of disgrace: self-anointed emperor prancing around in his new clothes spun from yarn, garbed in garble, delighting in unholy acts.

Once knights in shining armor now dulled, lulled by promises of great power in the bewitching hour, false sight in the selfish sheen gleaned from the mirror on the wall from self-reflections never seen. 

There in the silence is the Word unheard. 

Those Judases will never know the peace and love blessed and consecrated with blood on the cross there upon the hill, that solstice place of a lone skull.

Were it that simple to forgive in the know not what sinners do, especially those unforgivable acts of desecrations of a pure heart and holy temple, we would all be free, and the misguided would never again be imprisoned in delusions of grandeur, lost behind piles of grime and heinous abiding sin.  

How then to give hope when salvation is lost in the bypass of redemption, forgotten in unrepentant costs?  

Were we to harken back to the days of yore, remember our honor, decency and innocence, to where the truth was truth, and people mattered, then our purpose would be secured; our hearts lifted, not guttered, our thoughts pure and our souls esteemed and full of grace; and we would know Life and heaven's Light with enlightened insight.  

Epiphanies galore would be everywhere, transforming the world, transcending space and time, where love is love and peace is found in the compassionate understanding of fellowship that abounds.

Then in that time and space, peace and love will reign, and as prophesied, “the meek shall inherit the earth”.*

*Matthew 5:5

 

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Test Of Character

 

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Do you believe that when engaging in a game such as chess, one is solely competing against an opponent rather than confronting oneself and one's inherent humanity? 

The manner in which you play is significant because it reflects your character; it's a test of character.

When your actions lead to the use of game cheats, technical fouls, or cause harm, such actions not only damage your character and spirit but also impede your spiritual journey.

Moreover, such negative and dishonorable conduct can have repercussions that extend into future outcomes, particularly if these acts violate spiritual laws and result in sinful condemnation. 

We exist and participate within the divine playground of the Lord, which is governed by covenants with the Lord, as well as the spiritual laws of the Lord and the natural laws inherent to humanity.

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Why do unholy souls feel agony when touched by the holy?

According to Google AI search:

The idea that unholy souls suffer in the presence of the holy is a common theme in theology, mythology, and fantasy literature.

This reaction isn't usually seen as a physical attack but as an existential and spiritual clash.

Here’s why this agony occurs across different traditions:

1. The Nature of Absolute Truth

Exposure:

Holiness symbolizes ultimate truth, purity, and light.

The Agony:

Unholy souls are based on deceit, corruption, or darkness.

The Result:

Coming into contact with absolute truth forces the unholy soul to fully confront its own corruption, leading to intense psychological and spiritual suffering.

2. Ontological Incompatibility

Opposing Realities:

Holy and unholy are fundamentally incompatible states of being, much like matter and antimatter.

The Agony:

The presence of the holy acts as a corrosive agent to the structure of an unholy soul.

The Result:

The unholy soul experiences this as burning or tearing because its very nature is being rejected and undone by the surrounding purity.

3. Exposure of Guilt and Shame

The Light of Judgment:

In many theological views, holiness is a metaphorical blinding light.

The Agony:

Darkness hides guilt, regret, and sin.

The Result:

The holiness’s light of holiness removes all concealment, forcing the soul to face the full weight of its actions and separation from good without any protection.

4. Resistance to Divine Order

The Clash of Wills:

Unholy beings often thrive on rebellion, chaos, and self-assertion against divine rule.

The Agony:

The holy exerts natural, overwhelming authority and order.

The Result:

The unholy soul's resistance to this harmony causes friction, resulting in intense suffering.

5. Burning Love as Pain

The Christian Mystical View:

Some theologians (like St. Isaac the Syrian) suggest that the "fires of hell" are actually divine love experienced in heaven.

The Agony:

To a soul loving goodness, divine love is ecstatic. To a soul rooted in hatred and selfishness, that same love feels like a scorching, unbearable flame.

Whatever the reason, unholy souls will experience suffering when in contact with the holy.*

No matter the realm or plane, humans are mortal beings capable of both good and evil through choice, and in those choices, they can become the embodiments of either. This creates positive and negative energies accordingly.

The confusion might come from this capacity for both good and evil; however, we are not born of the latter, but formed by our deeds, thoughts, and actions in choices.

Satan was vanquished and cast out of heaven (Revelation 12:7-9). But where did Satan come from originally?  Heaven.

We can exorcise sin, repent, atone, and redeem ourselves, vanquishing darkness, but we can never erase who we are at our core, nor can we eliminate our conscience, however corrupted.

Therefore, to a soul now corrupted and fixated in hatred and selfishness, the same unconditional love will cause fiery, intolerable agony as the unholy spirit is rejected by the purity of the holy light.

Now, whatever the excuses or intent, if harm and corruption resulted from actions, it will cause the soul to become unholy; then the unholiness would be the true state of this soul.

No priest, no saint, no angel can help remove the guilt and shame in unrepentant and unforgivable sin; and absolution is not possible in the unrepentant and unforgivable, because the desire for the sin, such as greed and lust, Satanic power and control, remains upon the minds, hearts, and souls of the unholy.  

In the end of moral life, the soul, holy or unholy, will be sorted to where it is most compatible, and the destiny of heaven or hell will be determined by its state, holy or unholy, and the deeds upon which we have built or destroyed our humanity. 

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*Documented from the Catholic Church, the Official Exorcist Diaries, and Priests, such as Father Gabriele Amorth.

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