Small Goodness in a Broken World

 

Raphael (Raffaelo Sanzio), Madonna del pesce (Madonna with the Fish), 1514.

Introduction

Kerk & Leven (“Church & Life”) is the leading weekly Catholic magazine in the Flemish region of Belgium. Since October 2025, on the invitation of the chief editor of the local edition of the parish of Olen, Cis Marinus, I have been writing a reflective article every two weeks from a philosophical and theological perspective, exploring Christianity in a scientific age.

29 October 2025

Small Goodness in a Broken World

In the Museo Nacional del Prado there hangs a painting that particularly intrigues me: Madonna of the Fish by the Italian painter Raphael, from the early sixteenth century. The title is somewhat puzzling. At the center we see Mary with the child Jesus on her lap, the Madonna. A very familiar theme, nothing that immediately stands out, you might say. But if we look to the left, we see the archangel Raphael bringing a boy to Mary. The young Tobias, in the foreground on the left, wearing an ochre-yellow dress and kneeling on one knee, hesitant and supported by Raphael, is clearly in awe of what is happening. What makes the painting unusual is that Tobias carries a large fish in his right hand, a striking detail that is apparently important enough to give the painting its name. No, not a surrealist painting by René Magritte, but a classical work from sixteenth-century Italy. Within this painting lies the key to a profound wisdom about life.

Let me take you briefly into the story of Tobias, from the somewhat lesser-known biblical book of Tobit. Through an accident, the old Tobit becomes blind and can no longer provide for his family. He sees no other option than to send his still very young son Tobias on a dangerous journey to another city to retrieve a sum of money that Tobit had deposited there. By “chance”, a passer-by overhears the conversation between Tobias’s parents and offers to accompany Tobias to ensure that no harm comes to him. This passer-by is in fact the archangel Raphael, who has disguised himself so that no one can recognize him as an angel. Only the reader is aware of this and thus becomes a participant in the secret.

During their long journey, they experience many things. At one point, Tobias must, at Raphael’s urging, overcome his fear and capture a fearsome-looking fish in a river. As it turns out, they will need this fish at the end of the story: with its gall, Tobit’s blindness will be cured. This explains why Tobias is depicted so prominently with a fish in the painting.

What is so remarkable in this story is that the archangel Raphael never once uses his higher powers to protect Tobias from danger. There are certainly tense moments when such powers would have been very useful. And yet Raphael does not resort to them. At most, he subtly guides events here and there, helps in a modest way, makes use of what is available, and warns when necessary, but he performs no miracles at all.

There is a very good reason for this. In ancient Jewish thought, our world has become imperfect, a broken symmetry in which only limited action is possible. In this broken, imperfect world, Raphael (whose name in Hebrew means “God has healed”) can only act in a modest and limited way as a healer. In Jewish mysticism, the idea of shevirat ha-kelim (“the breaking of the vessels”) describes how the divine light was once one, but shattered in the process of creation, resulting in a world of brokenness that must be “repaired.”

This insight offers a surprising key for reading biblical stories from both the Old and the New Testament. Strictly speaking, one could read the story of Tobias simply as a series of coincidental events in which nothing miraculous happens. Only when one enters into the dynamic of the faith narrative does the story reveal itself as a story of God’s involvement with humanity. 

What is essential here is that both ways of reading are equally legitimate. God is involved with humanity but does not intervene directly. There is therefore no proof or conclusive reasoning that can compel the believer’s interpretation. Nothing can force people into faith: no “spectacular events,” no “iron logic,” no exceptional religious experiences.

This Jewish interpretive key also opens a fruitful perspective on the healing activity of Jesus. After all, the New Testament is originally a Jewish book, a continuation of a story that began in the Old Testament. Consider, for example, the story of the adulterous woman, which seems destined to end in a stoning but is interrupted by Jesus, who asks a question and writes in the sand. The woman, caught in sin and whose story seems about to close, is forgiven by Jesus and thus receives a new future. Not by miraculously disarming the men with stones, but through his compassionate involvement, which unexpectedly reopens her story.

The story of the paralytic who is lowered through the roof is not primarily a story of miraculous healing, but one of the forgiveness of sins, through which the man is freed from his paralysis. As with the adulterous woman, Jesus is deeply concerned for this person but does not intervene directly. It is the paralytic himself who must rise and take up his mat. Likewise, in the story of the raising of Lazarus, it is Lazarus himself who must come out. Jesus calls him to emerge from the tomb after the stone has been rolled away; he does not forcibly bring him out against his will.

This Jewish idea of an imperfect world, a broken symmetry in which no grand miracles are possible, only limited action, is reflected in the very core of Jesus’ words and deeds. It also resonates in what the French-Jewish philosopher Emmanuel Levinas calls “small goodness.” Not grand acts in the name of a great Goodness (with a capital G), accompanied by fanfare and trumpet blasts, but small acts grounded in humanity. 

Levinas describes small goodness as “the goodness of everyday life,” a goodness that is fragile and provisional, “a goodness without witnesses, carried out in silence, modest, without triumph.” Listening to someone who is sad or lonely, sharing something without expecting anything in return, caring for another simply because that person is there. Small goodness lies in that elusive moment when you are touched by another and decide to do something good, without rules, rewards, or grand ideals.

Seen in this way, the Kingdom of God bears a striking resemblance to that small goodness. In the New Testament, the term “Kingdom of God” refers to a reality that is both not yet and already present. It is not a place or an event in the distant future, but something happening here and now. Jesus healing the sick, casting out demons, teaching a new way of life: all these are experienced as signs that the Kingdom of God is manifesting itself in the present. It is not about a distant afterlife, but about a call to human solidarity here and now, a call revealed in the way Jesus related to people, with special attention to the weakest and the outcast. Small goodness consists in attention: helping another through small, almost unnoticed acts, and being attentive to them, that is what truly matters.

 

Originally published as: van Biezen, A. (2025), Kleine goedheid in een gebroken wereld. In Kerk & Leven, edition 0485, 29 October 2025, p. 4.