“Nothing is not God,” said Virginia, “everything is God, good and bad, too; and the bad only seems bad to us, but really leads to good.”
“Everything is not God,” said Ruth, “for God is perfect, and we are imperfect, and are striving for his perfection. Imperfection and all bad things are not of God.”
“What are they, then?” I asked. “Surely you do not believe in two gods, like the Zoroastrians, in a good and a bad? But the wisest of them saw that the two were one.”
Ruth answered: “I have it at home in a book, how evil came into God’s world, although we are of him and he is perfect. I will bring it next time. I don’t remember it.”
“Yes, do bring it. But I believe that as long as we are not perfect, God is not perfect.”
“That seems,” answered Ruth, “as if we were God.”
“So we are a part of God, who is the whole. Anything else is unthinkable. And unless we are perfect, how can He be perfect?”
The children corrected me, for I had used the wrong word.
“God must be perfect,” they said, “if we long for that perfection.”
Virginia said: “If the world is ever to be perfect, then it is perfect now. Whatever shall be is here now, is here forever.”