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Jim's PERSPECTIVEOctober 14, 2013In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth....And God saw that it was good. Genesis 1:1,4 Thus says the Lord, “Stand in the ways, and see...where is the good way, and walk in it, and you shall find rest for your souls.” Jeremiah 6:16 We want everything to be good. We want to feel good. We want to have a good time. We want to have a good job; we want to do a good job. We want to live a good life. We want our children to be good and to have good things. We want the world to be a good place. We use the meaningless platitude, “It’s all good,” to indicate that we want things to go, well—all well and good. The key word here is “good.” It is the filter that we use to evaluate almost everything. This presupposes that the “good” actually exists. Christians believe and know that it does. And that it was so from the very beginning. However, we also know that everything in this world is not good. We think of not-good things as either less-than-good, or else, just plain bad. But we consider that all that is not good—in whatever proportion—is an aberration, a departure from that which should be. There are many who disagree. Their take on the world is that it is fundamentally not a good place, that people are not good, that good is actually the aberration or exception, not the other way around. Granted, when we Christians look at the world around us, many things are less-than-desirable. There is a lot of mischief and meanness afoot in our world. We would have to be blind and foolish not to see it. But again, we believe that good is the rule. “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” is, as you know, the so-called “Golden Rule.” Jesus even goes so far as to say that we are to do good to those who do not do, nor do they ever intend to do, good to us. Doing good to them is not always easy. But it points up the belief that good actually should be done, even if it is not. The ever-present temptation is to respond in kind. Another consistent temptation is to believe that the good is not the rule. And because good is not the rule, there is no point in trying to do or to be good. The really negative view believes that God is not good. This is the old argument that reasons that because of all in the world that is evil, self-serving, mean and base, if God made the world then he is the cause of it. In the Christian’s eyes, theirs is a short-sighted view. We know that they don’t have enough information (or else the right information) to reach that conclusion. We think that they stop a little too shy of the mark. God gets the blame—unfairly, we believe—when the blame should be on ourselves for the often poor choices that make the world what it is (but what it should not be). What do Christians know that many of the world do not know? “For the Lord is good, his mercy is everlasting, and his truth endures to all generations” (Psalm 100) is one thing we know. We know that there is a “taste”—a feeling—associated with goodness, that we are invited in Psalm 34 to “taste and see that the Lord is good.” That he “fills the hungry with good things” (Luke 1:53) is another awareness that we know and experience. In Genesis 50 when Joseph responds to his brothers for their malicious treatment of him, says, “"As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good....” (NASB) This is a statement that acknowledges the reality of that which is “not good,” and yet God can turn it around for his own purposes: namely to bless his people. We are especially blessed to “...know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are called according to his purpose” (Romans 8:28), and that “every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shifting shadow” (James 1:17). We believe that all that is good in this world will be preserved in the world to come: “I the Lord do keep it. I will water it every moment...I will keep it night and day” (Isaiah 27:3). And, like Paul in 2 Timothy 1:12, we can say, “I whom I have believed and am persuaded that He is able to keep what I have committed to Him until that Day.” Again, all are invited to taste and see… - Jim Radford |
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©2013 Jim Radford. All rights reserved. Unauthorized duplication prohibited.
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