There are two very different ideas on this subject. One of them is the idea that he is beyond good and evil. Now we humans call one thing good and another thing bad. But according to some people, that is merely a human point of view. These people would say that the wiser you become, the less you would want to call anything good or bad. And the more clearly you would see that everything is good in one way and bad in another. And that nothing could have been different. Consequently, these people think that long before you got anywhere near the divine point of view, the distinction would have disappeared altogether. We call cancer bad, they would say, because it kills a man. But you might just as well call a successful surgeon bad because he kills cancer. It all depends on the point of view.
The other and opposite idea is that God is quite definitely good or righteous. A God who takes sides, who loves love and hates hatred, who wants us to behave in one way and not in another.
The first of these views – the one that thinks God beyond good and evil – is called pantheism. It was held by the great Russian philosopher Hegel and as far as I can understand them, by the Hindus. The other view is held by Jews, Muhammadans and Christians. And with this big difference between pantheism and the Christian idea of God, there usually goes another. Pantheists usually believe that God animates the universe as you animate your body. That the universe almost is God so that if it did not exist, he would not exist either. And anything you find in the universe is a part of God. The Christian idea is quite different. They think God invented and made the universe like a man making a picture or composing a tune. A painter is not a picture and he does not die if his picture is destroyed. You may say he’s put a lot of himself into it but you only mean that all its beauty and interest has come out of his head. His skill is not in the picture in the same way that it is in his head or even in his hands. I expect you see how this difference between Pantheists and Christians hangs together with the other one. If you do not take the distinction between good and bad very seriously, then it is easy to say that anything you find in this world is a part of God. But if you think something’s really bad and God really good, then you cannot talk like that. You must believe that God is separate from the world and that some of the things we see in it are contrary to his will.