Who Is ‘Good?’

There is so much division in our world today. I can’t say if it’s always been like this or if it’s gotten worse now than it has been in the past. Maybe social media and our growing ability to be connected has only illuminated what was already there. Regardless, division is very prevalent in this world.

I was thinking about why this might be, and my thoughts landed on how everyone is good. In their own minds, everyone is good, everyone is righteous, everyone knows what’s up. So what happens when people disagree. Well that would make the others bad, or wrong, or foolish. But these fools keep shouting so loudly about how they’re right and I am in fact the one who is wrong.

What a ridiculous thing to say. After all, I’ve done this, and even more of that. All these good things came from me right? I’m such a good person, truly. If they can’t even see that, well that just makes me realize how much smarter I am than them. Their so-called good deeds don’t compare to mine. And if they do, well then they must not actually be such good deeds to have come from such a foolish and evil person.

This may seem like an exaggerated example, but I believe that many if not most fall into this line of thinking, just in a much more subtle way. So, if everyone is saying this same thing, how do we know who is truly good. We clearly can’t even agree on what good is. No wonder there’s so much division. Luckily, it’s not up to us.

Relational Good Vs. Absolute Good

Let’s be real, we all know where this article is going. This blog is about God after all. But before I get into God’s Goodness, I want to talk about the ideas of relational good and absolute good.

Relational Good is the type of good we can quantify and see. We do this through comparison. In our minds, comparing our good deeds to those of others – and on the flip side, our bad deeds to their’s – we can determine if we are good or bad. This is a dangerous trap we often fall into. It is a lie from the enemy, and yet it’s become the benchmark most people use nowadays. Christians often fall into this trap as well. I know I’ve been guilty of it in the past.

Absolute Good is true good. Truth is above us. It is of God. We do not get any say in what is true and what is false. If we do, then it’s not truth. We may do things that are true. For example, I can pick up a pencil and put it back down. Then it is true that I picked it up, and put it down again. We cannot, however, decide on our own what is true. I cannot then say that I had not actually picked up that pencil and put it down again, regardless of what a philosopher might attempt to argue. Good very much falls under the category of truth. It is absolute, and we do not get to determine it. I think that’s why the world loves Relational Good so much. They get to control it, mold it to be what they want rather than actually doing what is good.

The Further Dangers of Relational Good

As I said, Relational Good is a lie from the enemy, but let’s get more specific as to why it’s so dangerous.

Relational Good naturally pits us against one another. We are constantly, often subconsciously trying to outdo one another to prove that we are good, or to at least solidify that idea in our own brains. To shape that identity for ourselves.

We form groups with people who have similar ideas as to what good is, fall in line in similar ways, and agree that the same other types of people are all fools.

But why is that so wrong?

Maybe one such group actually is right and all the others actually are wrong. Or maybe, because we are oh so humble people, we can even admit that we are potentially wrong and one of the other groups is right. Why is it a bad thing to stick to these ideas, these groups?

That’s because we’re all wrong. We don’t actually know everything that Absolute Good entails, and so we are all destined to be wrong about something, and in truth, many things.

Genesis 2:9 says “The Lord God made al kinds of trees grow out of the ground – trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food. In the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.” (NIV). Did you catch that one little word there? The knowledge of good and evil. Not the knowledge of what good and evil actually are. So during the fall from eating the fruit of this tree, we didn’t actually learn what absolute good was. We just learned the good and evil existed, information that we really didn’t need for an abundance of reasons.

Now some theologians may debate on how literal this passage is, and many non-Christians will debate whether it actually happened. Fine. Turn to history for this revelation. History has proved time and time again that no one truly knows what good really is. Each side in a war thinks they have good reasons, but the other side says it’s selfish or unjust, and both will truly believe their own version. No one really knows.

The Sand

So now we’re all pitted against each other because of all the different ways we’re each wrong about what good is.

Lovely.

Let’s make it even worse.

If we’re all arguing while both being misguided, doesn’t that beg the thought that we’re all hypocrites?

This is another reason why Relative Good is truly bad: it turns us into hypocrites.

This can be hard to wrap our heads around, especially when we’ve gone to such lengths to convince ourselves we’re good. To help with this, I like to think about being a beach.

We’re all sand, telling the other beaches that they’re more sandy than we are, and so they must be much worse. The sand in this case, is our sin. Each individual grain is another of our sins, our wrongdoings, our evil. How much sand makes up a beach? It would be pointless to call another beach bad for all its sand when we too are made up of so much of it. One being slightly bigger than the other makes so little difference that it’s not even remotely relevant to a conversation of who is good and who is bad.

We both are bad.

So Who Is Good?

None of us.

Not naturally anyway. How can we be? We don’t know what good is. And the truth is, we never needed to know. We still don’t, not when we do know the one who is Absolute Good: God.

The point of our being here was never to be good. The point of us being here is to follow God, the one who is good. As we do this, we will be healed by Him, and we will reflect His image more. This will make us better. Following Him is the true goal.

Does this mean Christians are better than non-Christians? No. This is not meant to be an outward comparison, but an internal struggle for the goal of better. Again, we go back to the sand example. What would be the point of saying one has more sand than another when there’s so much of it in our lives? Christians are not sinless. We will continue to fall short of the glory of God even as we follow Him. We have fallen short of the Glory of God before we devoted ourselves to Him. Even the most zealous of followers have fallen. Think of Paul when he was Saul and persecuted followers of Jesus. Think of Peter when he denied Jesus three times. Think of Thomas when he doubted Jesus’s resurrection. Even they were not sinless. Only Jesus was.

The real difference between Christians and non-Christians are that we know we need God. God is the one who saves us. Jesus died on the cross for us, to pay the price for our sins so that we don’t have to. Christians have recognized their need for this grace and have accepted this gift He has given us. It makes us no better or worse than non-Christians, it just means we follow the one who is truly good.

How deeply must the one who is good love us, we who are not good at all? How deeply must He love us to pay such a terrible price on our behalf, the one’s who truly deserve it? The ones who hated Him enough to crucify Him? We hate each other simply for having different ideas of what good is. He loved us so deeply, despite knowing we are not good.

The division in this world, the arguing over good and evil: it’s all pointless. Only true good matters, and only God is truly good.