Goodness

What is so good about Goodness?

There has been such a distortion of goodness. One would be tempted to say that the distortion of goodness seems more prevalent in our modern times. But we can look back to the beginning of Man, where Adam and Eve were deceived into believing that disobedience was good. This tattered thread of false goodness has been strung from Adam and Eve all the way until now, and it continues through our generations until the coming of Christ, the ultimate Good. He will set things right and He will restore all things back to the goodness that they ought to have. But for now, we must endure, struggling to name good things good and to name bad things bad.

The world, the flesh, and the devil are desperate to name things all wrong, to misname, to deceive, and to lie. They want to distort what is good so that it is perverse and then call those perverse things good. To survive, gloriously, in this fallen world, one needs an unchanging standard where all the good things have been named and where it details equally when things are bad. It is also important to know how things became bad, thus teaching us to avoid doing it ourselves and also enabling us to admonish and correct those who are in the process of doing bad things or naming good things as bad and vice versa. Ultimately, we must know things as they are. Bad is sin and good is truth. We have hope because with total finality goodness in the person of Jesus Christ will have victory over sin and evil.

In the beginning, God set down his standard for us to follow. We are given the responsibility to follow that which is good. We must navigate the daily distortion of truth, goodness, and beauty by sin and cling to the pure truth. This is made possible by the Holy Spirit, and he will guide us into all truth and teach us to love what is good. As we submit to the will of God and are progressively sanctified in this life, we will stand more firmly for the truth. As Paul states in Romans 1.16, "For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes..." Paul is not embarrassed of what is good in the truest sense.

In following this standard of goodness, which is directly connected with the Gospel of God, we must stand for what is good in the public domain. Peter gives us his own example when he is threatened and told to stop by the rulers and elders after teaching in the synagogue. "for we cannot but speak of what we have seen and heard." Acts 4.20. Goodness, in this sense, is the truth of the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Peter could not deny or cease to proclaim what is good. We should not waver from proclaiming that which is good as long as what is good is connected with Jesus Christ. Ultimately, all that we see here on earth will be destroyed and a New Heaven and a New Earth will be made in its place. Any goodness and good thing that we see here is a precursor of the fullness of Goodness that is to come, when Jesus returns, restores, and redeems. We look forward, as Christians, to the time when Christ will reign in perfect goodness and there will no longer be any distortion, sin, and evil.