“We are not good people who make the odd mistake. We are not wonderful individuals with a few flaws that can be blamed on our upbringing, our environment, or our lack of sleep last night. We are sinners with deceitful hearts, who fall short of God’s glorious standards…”
[Alistair Begg]
Whether you know it or not, we struggle spelling “good” in today’s society. Not in the way that grabbing your spelling-bee trophy from 2nd grade would do you any favors. (A trophy I failed to earn myself when I didn’t put an “e” at the end of the word “biome.”) But in the way that we long for what is good yet find the bad always getting in the way.
We want “good” politicians but always seem to end up with presidents fluctuating somewhere between a 30-40% approval rating on even the best days of a 4-year term. Terms that frequently end in collusions, corruptions, or, at the very least, controversy.
We want “good” teachers in our schools while many parents find themselves blaming the teacher for their child’s lack of education. Or, worse, seeing teachers convicted of unspeakable crimes during their employment.
We want “good” food, “good” movies, and “good” spouses while we end up with a hair in our tacos, boredom in our theatres, and disappointment with our marriages. And, let’s be honest, for some in our lives it is identifying the good in the only one of these three with a human heart to be the most difficult for them to wrangle.
What’s the problem underneath it all in finding one that’s “good?” Could it be that we are simply trying to spell “good” without G-O-D? In case you think I am just trying to be witty on an endless journey of no real point, let me explain.
When we try to spell “good” without G-O-D, we actually lose something as a result. Besides a proper standard of good, our designation of what is “bad” is also in danger of being mislabeled because it is based upon a faulty standard altogether.
You know why many around us can’t seem to find “good” politicians, teachers, or spouses? Because the standard we are using to define the term is skewed—it’s us. How do I know this? Because without God, we can’t help but become the standard of good ourselves and who among us is absent of fault? And, because of this, our standard of what is “bad” is not only skewed but shifting as quick as the faults that lie beneath the very crust of our earth.
As we change as individuals, our standard of what is acceptable or not changes with us so that we can always remain on the positive side of our own judgments. And like the cracks left behind from a quake, these shifts within our own selves hold potential dangers as well.
Like many things in our modern society, we tend to think we can recognize the standard of “good” like we can recognize a color. A child is taught what the color red is, not by reading a book about it, but by seeing a clear example of it in contrast with other colors in a box of crayons.
But what we don’t consider is the family who chooses instead to teach their child the same color based on a totally different, less-pure standard of a more-pink version of the uncooked meat they are eating for dinner. When the standard changes, the idea of what was once objective is now fading into subjective territory.
No harm, no foul, it’s just a color, right? Right. But what we must realize is that, like colors, one’s idea of good can fade over time if we don’t consciously have the same standard for what it is in its purest form to look back at when challenged or sought changed.
When you or I can’t properly define “good,” one “good” political candidate this November leads to another that we have judged from hours of personal research and our own critical eye but with the same results—disappointment and unmet expectations of those who deemed their character worthy. This has led to many withdrawing from voting altogether because, well, “what’s the point?”
When you or I can’t properly define “good,” one teacher with a sparkling resume leads to another with the same results once again—shock and surprise when that news headline contains their name. This leads to a shortage of teachers and an exhausting cycle of firing and hiring from those who have no answers, only hoping they can hold on to their position just long enough to reach retirement.
And the list goes from one category to the next without ever finding satisfaction on this endless road that our t-shirt says is “The Good Life” but, in reality, is something that is fading faster than the shirt’s graphic of a stickman sipping a pina colada every time we wash it.
Maybe it’s time we seek a better standard to begin with—something or someone that is better than ourselves. A standard of good at such a level that it is only when we emulate this one that we can accurately say, “I resemble that remark.” For when we have a proper spelling of what is “good,” we can begin to have a proper understanding of what the opposite looks like as well. The problem with such an understanding is that the former begins to look less like us and more like God, and the latter the very opposite.
So Jesus said to him, "Why do you call Me good? No one [is] good but One, [that is], God.”
[Mark 10:18]
Is that an understanding we are willing to admit, or would we rather continue spelling “good” without “G-O-D?” If spelling “good” absent of these is what you choose, look at the only letter you’re left with. It’s a letter eerily similar to the number of times the expectations of our world are met in its journey to finding what is lasting and forever “G-O-O-D.” An ending, ironically enough, very much like the one the man had leaving Jesus that day.
But he was sad at this word, and went away sorrowful…
[Mark 10:22]
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