goodness – Authentic Hope for Answers

What is a good person? How to define what goodness is for a human being? In his ground-breaking, thoroughly reasoned, brilliantly insightful book “After Virtue”, Alasdair MacIntyre clarifies the question with luminous simplicity. Taking as examples how we would assess whether a watch is a good watch or a farmer is a good farmer, he says “we define both ‘watch’ and ‘farmer’ in terms of the purpose or function which a watch or a farmer are typically expected to serve.” A knife or a pen is similarly “good” if they fit the purpose for which they were conceived.

Reflecting on this, I realised that Jesus had taught this principle when he referred to salt. “Salt is good” is one of his words, (Luke 14.34). Its purpose is clearly to provide flavour to food. In the Sermon on the Mount, however, he adds, “but if salt has lost its taste… it is no longer good”; it can’t fulfil its purpose (Matthew 5.13).

Why is our generation so confused about goodness and morality? Why do ethical debates, instead of helpfully defining goodness, end rather in a good mess? Alasdair MacIntyre puts his finger on the deep reason: what’s missing is an understanding of man’s purpose (telos is the word he uses). If a thing is considered good because it fulfils its objective or purpose, the key question is what is the purpose of human beings? If there is no clear answer to that question, it is impossible to judge whether a person is good.

Now if everything in the universe, including our human species, resulted from a powerful explosion without any guiding intelligence and wisdom to provide the purpose of it all, there can be nothing but confusion both as to our meaning and purpose. And lacking understanding of our purpose, there is no means of assessing the goodness or badness of people.

So the secular West’s evacuating the Biblical wisdom of the divine Creator who had in mind a purpose for his creation, and specifically for human beings made “in his image”, is the real cause of our profound confusion. If we do not know what a person if “for”, we cannot say whether or not he is good in accomplishing that purpose.

So both the meaning and purpose of our human existence, and the criteria of good and bad, depend on knowing why we exist – what is our telos. Back in the 17^th century, some serious biblical scholars, reflecting on the essence of Christian truth, posed in the Westminster Shorter Catechism the question, “What is the chief end (telos) of man?” They furnished Christianity with the most brilliant summary answer, unsurpassed in four centuries: “The chief end of man is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever”. Vital wisdom in 14 words!

The same essential answer was expressed by Stephen Meyer, erudite scientist, biblical Christian, and author of “The Return of the God Hypothesis”. Interviewed by Piers Morgan and asked point blank: “What is the meaning of life?” he responded wonderfully: “To come into a relationship with the Creator”. If that is the purpose of our existence, and we are not in harmonious relationship with God, we are not truly “good”, for we are not fulfilling the purpose for which we were made. Today the Creator calls us out of that problematic situation: “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened”, says Jesus, “and I will give you rest… learn from me” (Matthew 11.28). We will find that rest, through Jesus, as we commit to fulfilling His purpose for our lives.

Clive Every-Clayton

To say that God is good is fairly commonplace: if there is a God, most people would agree, he ought to be good. But Jesus had a different angle on this. This is his riposte to someone who called him “good Master”: “Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone” (Luke 18.18-19). No one is good! Only God is!

This is a profound insight, and a vital clue to answering many of our ethical questions. The first important thing Jesus teaches here is that no-one is good. On two occasions in his teaching, speaking to a perfectly ordinary group of listeners, he refers to them as “evil”. In his famous “Sermon on the Mount”, for example, he says, “If you, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask him!” (Matthew 7.11 and again in Luke 11.13).

These words communicate two truths: first, that people are essentially classified by God as “evil”; yet, they are also capable of doing good, like giving good things to their kids. What may seem shocking to us, however, is Jesus’ insistence that “no one is good” in the absolute sense – or as the Bible teaches elsewhere, “There is no-one righteous, not even one… for all have sinned” (Romans 3.10, 23).

The second thing taught by Jesus is that God is good – indeed, he alone is good. Now these two fundamental truths revealed about both God and humans form the foundation enabling us to get clarity on issues relating to morality.

We all face moral questions every day: what should I do? What is right or wrong here? How am I to decide? According to my family tradition? According to the majority opinion? By the light of my conscience? One’s conscience needs a reference for its judgment, and that reference can vary – it is not stable.

“Only God is good”: here, then, Jesus would say, is the only proper source for understanding what is good and what is evil. This is a service that “only God” can render to humanity – for we are all tainted with evil to some degree, and therefore disqualified to pontificate on moral truth. God alone – who is our Maker, after all – is wise and good enough to inform us correctly about how his creatures are to be good.

And God has rendered us this service – beginning by laying down the famous Ten Commandments which he gave to Moses for his people to obey. Jesus reinforced those commandments and Christians hold to them as defining right human behaviour. To disobey them is wrong. So adultery, theft and murder, for example, are wrong, as are coveting (lust), perjury (lying), and putting other things as “gods” in the place of God himself. These are the minimum basics for truly good human living. And Jesus fills out the very demanding “spirit” of these commandments in his Sermon on the Mount. Have you ever read it? It is revolutionary! You will find it in Matthew’s Gospel, chapters 5 to 7.

There’s more to say on our need for moral guidance, but the key is – God is good, and it is he who can (and does) tell us. And it is to him, after all, that we are answerable. If this highlights the very real problem of our misdeeds, we need to hear – and can know – that God forgives. That’ll be for another blog post.

Clive Every-Clayton

Tag: goodness

Am I a good person?

Only God is good