Being Good, for Goodness Sake

If you would ask most people about their spiritual condition they would respond in a way that was related to the goodness they perceive within themselves.  Generally speaking, everyone ranks themselves as being a fairly good person.  On the grand measuring scales of "Walking Old Ladies Across the Street VS Tripping Old Ladies" most people feel that things are heavily weighted in favor of them being quite good people.  And SHOCKINGLY most people rarely would stack the cosmic karma scales of their life to be heavier on the "Not Good" side.

Now we all know someone(or many ones) who are themselves not in any way a "good person".  But when it comes to ourselves, we consider it a fairly cut and dry case of being quite good indeed.  Sure, we did that one thing that one time, but...there was a good reason for it...and we won't do it again.   And if God exists he must surely be measuring and evaluating us by the very standards we have accepted on our own behalf...and therefore....we are good to go!

This self-assured self-rigtheousness is a natural philosophical outflow of the moral autonomy of our age.  If WE are the final arbitrers of what is right and good then we can set the standards and provide the weights and measures of evaluation and however it is we set it we obviously will find ourselves on the good side of things.  How illogical would it be for us to create our own self-defined system of morality that we didn't personally agree with and line up with??  Our personal preferences rule the day.  And when we feel "righteous anger" at immoral people it is based upon the standards that we have agreed to as being what is and isn't morally appropriate.

But are we truly morally autonomous?  Is morality simply a constructed and flexible system that bends to the wills of the individuals and groups who seek to employ its paradigm for preferential reasons??

While other, much more smarterer people than I, have delved deep into this topic I will only simply say that if morality is self, or even culturally, constructed, than it is not an absolute morality in any meaningful sense.  What is good today is only perhaps going to be good tomorrow.  If morality is not an immaterial absolute that we can count on then we all just have little self-created kingdoms of preferences and opinions.

So back on the treadmill you go, running hard after that elusive ill defined concept of morality and being good for the sake of being "good" without any promise that it has any actual significance beyond the reach of your own experience.

Philosophically speaking one must hope to no small degree that there really isn't God out there.  If we honestly recognize that we are not able to self-discern absolute morality, yet feel driven to care about morality, we recognize that morality is a burden set upon us.  And the God who is Himself absolute(by definition) assuredly has more stringent standards of morality than that which you place upon yourself.

Recall how you easily recognize the moral failings of those who aren't you, how much more so will an infinite God recognize within yourself?

In response to that we have two popular forms of addressing this disconnect.

Secular Moralism and Religious Legalism

They are basically different sides of the same coin.  An attempt made by the effort and the will to jump through enough hoops to be "good enough".  We set forth tasks and rules by which we can rank how succesful we have been at accomplishing the important task of being as good as we need to be.  But even that "need to be" is hard to pin down.....how good really is good enough????

The easiest way we deal with this internal struggle is finding more and more faults in others.  Because, if we are obviously better in our moral choices, lifestyle, and religious practices, than THOSE people, then we must surely be "ok".

But is that really the whole story and our hope?



14 having canceled out the certificate of debt consisting of decrees against us, which was hostile to us; and He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross. 15 When He had disarmed the rulers and authorities, He made a public display of them, having triumphed over them through Him.

16 Therefore no one is to act as your judge in regard to food or drink or in respect to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath day— 17 things which are a mere shadow of what is to come; but the substance belongs to Christ. 
  - Colossians 2:14-17

The message of the Good News is that there IS truth, morality, ethics, value in choices, etc.  AND that we are all falling short.  Now, instead of Jesus offering new and better ways to just be good enough to be good enough, He takes our sin and failures to the cross and nails them there.  The morality that yous sense, and the rules you try to follow, all exist to point to the hope that we have in the finished work of Christ.

Our hope is not found in how good we can be, but in Jesus.  God's love for you is not dependent on how honestly you try to be really good person.  But in Christ, and Christ Alone, you have been made Good for His Goodness' Sake!

Everything else is a promise of new ladders to climb and treadmills to run on.  Christ invites you to stop trying to make yourself good enough, but to rest in His goodness.  Everything flows out of that.

Are you good because you are trying to earn something, or, are you good because He was good to you?  It's a difference that makes all the difference.

When Good isn't Good Enough

My son has reached the age where he has been taught the classic, "Stop, Drop and Roll" technique for addressing being on fire.  This is a good thing.  If my son ever finds himself in a situation where his pants have begun to burn and smolder, it will be very beneficial for him to know what to do.  Not to mention it is fun to watch him demonstrate his SDaR technique in our living room.

Valuable as it may be, SDaR misses a very important point that ultimately is much more vital to my sons survival.  Practically speaking, the likelihood of my five year old spontaneously catching fire while playing on the swing set is highly unlikely.  What is much more probable is that while we are sleeping there is an electrical fire that starts somewhere in our house.  With our house ablaze my son may very well find some sort of fire on his clothes.  And if that is to occur....he has to GET OUT OF THE HOUSE!!!! 

If you were to find yourself in a burning house all the SDaR in the world will not save you if you do not first get out of the source of the fire.  No matter how effectively and rapidly you roll back and forth on the floor you will eventually burn up.  Get away from the fire, and THEN deal with your smoldering pants.  To reverse that vital process is the height of absurdity. 

In the Gospel of John the ministry of Jesus really gets going when he comes to the Festival of the Booths and calls out all the hyper religious people for being great rule followers who are still destined for destruction.  The Jewish religious establishment prided itself on doing all the right things the right way, but Jesus tells them it is all for naught.  Their behavior is not going to stave off destruction. 

Clearly he was a popular fellow......

Behaving morally, ethically, kindly, etc, are all nice and commendable things.  My preference is to have neighbors who do NOT rob me in the middle of the night and set my house on fire.  The reasons that they do not behave in such a manner are, in some ways, immaterial to me.  If my neighbor believes he is being monitored by aliens who will shoot him with space lasers if he mistreats me, the end, self-centered result is that my day to day life is more pleasant because I have a neighbor who acts appropriately. 

Good behavior is our Stop Drop and Roll.  In a vacuum it is a good thing to know and put into practice.  But what if we are ultimately in the middle of a blazing inferno? 

In John 8 Jesus is beginning to get to the crux of his argument.  That these moral and good behaving people cannot follow Jesus and are going to die in their sins(verse 21).  To understand the context of what Jesus is saying we must recognize the context of the environment that Jesus is stating this.  Everything about this Festival is in proclaiming how righteous and good they all are because of how they follow all the rules.  Their self-styled "goodness" is based on the belief that following the clearly laid out rules justifies themselves in the eyes of God.  They treat religious law as a sort of road map that guarantees that they will arrive at their desired destination. 

With that sort of imagery in mind Jesus says, "You cannot follow where I am going".  Which means, "There is no human road map that you can control and manipulate that will save you".  What will save them?  Believe in the Son of Man who will be raised up(verse 28).  Through the finished work of Christ on the cross(the raised up Son of Man) we can be saved from death.  There is no other way.

If you are sit in a burning house your inevitable life trajectory is destruction.  Before you do anything else, get out!  The natural state of our lives is death.  No matter what good we do, what rules we adhere to, what ethically justifiable behaviors we practice, we are headed to a fire. 

Does this mean that "good" behavior is pointless?  Of course not.  Even if you get out of the burning house you still have to deal with the embers before they cause you damage.  But if you reverse the process of salvation first, THEN regeneration(Holy("good") lives), you aren't doing anything at all.  Rolling around on the ground won't get you out of the house.  Getting out of the house makes the rolling around effective. 

You will never be good enough to get out of the fire. 

Compromising Compromise

Compromise is the name of the game.  The rules are; If you are going to be a good person who isn't criticized by others, you must compromise your position to accommodate someone else's perspective. 

Politicians are criticized when they refuse to compromise.  Regardless of how far apart a position may be from yours, the fact that you won't bend your idea/conviction to mesh with an arguably diametrically opposed position you are an "obstructionist".  If you are part of a Church or religious organization that boldly states "This is in alignment with Biblical truth, THIS is not" you are fundamentalist wackos that hopefully will implode and cease to exist. 

Rarely is there every a thoughtful interaction with the position you are refusing to compromise on.  By virtue of your lack of compromise, you are to be discounted, mocked, criticized and ostracized. 

When we are kids we learn about this concept in a much more negative context.  We call it peer pressure.  And, peer pressure is rarely used to describe a positive influence.  Instead, we teach our kids that regardless of what other people say, you need to stick to what is right.  You know the cliché....if all your friends jumped off a bridge......

As we age we morph the negative connotations of peer pressure and dress it up as the virtue of "compromise".  Oddly, compromise rarely indicates raising standards, but lowering them.  You never hear about peer pressure that forced some poor teenager into doing their homework.  Or, a compromising politician who leaves some aspect of abortion "rights" on the table for the sake of compromise.  It nearly always requires moving from higher moral and ethical standards to lower ones.

¹⁴ Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers. For what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness? Or what fellowship has light with darkness?   -- 2 Corinthians 6:14

What does it mean to be unequally yoked?  Does it mean to completely disavow a relationship with unbelievers, to ostracize them, to cut them off from fellowship?

No.

It indicates that we are not to give "equal" footing to that which is evil(darkness) with that which is light(God's truth).  Compromise demands that we treat all opinions as equally valid, therefore, it should be completely acceptable to give a bit on your position because, Hey, there is no real difference. 

If someone had a position that they wanted to kill you, and your position was to not be dead.  What is the compromise that you should find?  That only your arm is shot?  Don't be obtuse.  There is no compromise in this scenario.  What that person wants you to accept(being dead) is unacceptable regardless of the circumstances.

Compromise is too often nothing more than peer pressure with facial hair and a 401k.  If something is true and right, don't compromise.  Stand for truth.  

PS---Clearly there are scenarios where compromise is good.  For example;  My wife wants Chinese for dinner, and I want Mexican.  So we compromise by getting Chinese......When I talk about compromise here, I am referring to moral and ethical issues, not where you are going to eat tonight.