Goodness

What does it mean to be good? Is it simply not doing things that are wrong or is it more than that? This question comes out of a series that we are doing at church at the moment on 2 Peter 1, on characteristics that we should aspire to have.

“…make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; and to godliness, mutual affection; and to mutual affection, love. For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. But whoever does not have them is nearsighted and blind, forgetting that they have been cleansed from their past sins.” 2 Peter 1:5-9

So, what is this goodness that we should seek to add to our lives? It is here listed as a virtue, which means that it can not simply be the absence of a vice. That is, goodness is not simply ‘being good’, not doing anything wrong, but rather has a proactive nature that replaces something which is bad with something desirous. Simply put, goodness is not simply the absence of badness.

We do have a model for what goodness is, and that model is Christ. When Jesus was called ‘good teacher’ he responded thus

“’Why do you call me good?’ Jesus answered. ‘No one is good—except God alone.’ ” Luke 18:19

So we are to seek to become more like God in this, to become good as God is good. Specifically the word here translated goodness is ‘αρετε’ in the Greek, which means (according to my pastor) ‘moral characteristics worthy of praise’. So we are to add to our faith moral characteristics which are worthy of praise.

Can we look at our lives at the moment and say that our character is worthy of praise, as God’s character is? I certainly can not, and it is a high thing to aim for, but that is what we are called to do. Remember that ‘with man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible’; it is only through faith that we have a chance of adding goodness to ourselves.

A Pessimistic Christian?

This morning at church we were looking at developing as a Christian. At a list of characteristics that we should seek to grow in as we continue our walk with Christ.

“make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; and to godliness, mutual affection; and to mutual affection, love.”
2 Peter 1:5b-7

However I believe that this list is not exhaustive. I think that we can find other traits which we should seek after, and ones we should try and banish from our lives. In this post I shall be looking briefly at pessimism, is it a trait that we should desire, one to be avoided or simply one that has no bearing on the working out of our faith?

The last part of this question is perhaps the simplest to consider. Every character trait has an impact on who we are, are we generally happy or melancholy, loving or hateful, introverted or outward looking. Every part of our character determines what we are most likely to do in any given situation. An extravert may be uncomfortable in a room on his own and get up and seek out company, whilst an introvert is much more likely to remain where they are. Thus every single facet of our personality will effect how we perceive the world and live our lives. To live our lives for Christ means that every aspect of them must be brought before his throne with willingness to be changed in order to be more like him.

What does a pessimistic view of the world really imply? A pessimist generally sees the worst in any situation, saying that their endeavours are bound to fail, that no matter how promising something looks at the moment it’s bound to go wrong in the end. There are two things that I think are wrong with this view of the world. Primarily a pessimistic Christian can not truly believe in an all powerful God who loves them. To see every task as a failure before it is even failed denies God’s power and love, after all we are told to “bring everything before him in prayer and petition”. What is the point of prayer, if God does not listen? If you deem your task a failure do you demand that God gives up on it too? Is there no expectation of intervention?

Secondly, we are told to live for this day. Not “to worry about tomorrow”, by saying ‘this task will fail’ in the heart, is one not really saying ‘I know what tomorrow will bring and that will be failure’? Even Christ did not know the date of his second coming, how are we then to know what will happen tomorrow?

To summarise: pessimism is liable to lead to a belief that only I have an impact on my life, both its successes and failures and to worry about the future rather than living in the present. I hope that I have managed to convey what I believe about the necessity to deny the pessimistic cravings within all of us with out causing any offence. If that is not the case than please accept my heart felt apologies.

Feelings and Faith

What happens when we are feeling sad, down, depressed? When we just have one of those days or if things are not going well? Do we give up? Or do we keep running the race set before us?

In a small group this week we ended up talking about praising God all the time. That the first chapter of Ephesians tells us that this is the ultimate point of our salvation: ‘To the praise of his glorious grace’. Someone said that this means that we should praise God the whole time. But I think this is not the case. After all there is a book in the Bible called lamentations, and there are psalms of lament, and then we have Job.

All of these describe people who are bringing everything before God, not just the good bits but the whole of there lives. Their lives are not perfect yet they bring the whole of their lives before God. Before we start to think that this is simply an Old Testament phenomenon, in the New Testament we are told to ‘bring everything before God in prayer and petition’. Yet bringing everything to God does not imply doubt in God’s goodness or power. Job brought his complaints before God yet still believed in him and knew that he was loved by him.

After all if you are truly in a relationship with someone you don’t only tell them the good things. They know a whole plethora of things about you from the big things down to the minutia. How superficial would your relationship be if the whole time that something was wrong you were pretending that everything was fine?

Another problem with the idea that we should be constantly praising God is that when we feel down and don’t praise God it becomes easier to doubt the truth because we then ‘can’t’ bring how we are feeling before God. Thus our relationship with God ends up depending on our fickle feelings. To avoid this dependence on our feelings we need to know the truth in our head. We need to be imbued by the word, its knowledge percolating our whole being. So that when we don’t feel like praising God, when things are going badly, we still know that our salvation is secure in Christ and that God does indeed love us, even if we’re not feeling it.

The First Step

How do we know where God wants us to be, what he wants us to be doing, how we are to serve him. Do we wait for a sign, for opportunities to spring up before us or do we do what we think is best, even when it seems to be failing?

Israel’s priests would have suffered, I’m sure, the same thoughts as they prepared to cross the Jordan. They’d heard stories growing up of that great act of Exodus, when God parted the waters so that his people could cross over, but they had not seen it first hand. Now, 40 years later, they were being ordered to carry Israel’s most precious treasure in to the mighty river Jordan. Not only did they have to cross a river but they had to cross a large river in flood.

The priests walked down to the bank of the river and stepped out (literally and figuratively) in faith. We read in Joshua 4 that

“as soon as the priests ... feet touched the water's edge, the water from upstream stopped flowing”

The important thing to note is that the river did not dry up before the priests began to cross. As commanded they simply kept on walking into the river, yet as SOON as their feet touched the river it stopped flowing. It was God’s plan, yet the river was still there when they started forward.

Today, do we wait for too much detail, for the path set before us to be brilliantly clear before we set off? Or do we, as these priest did, step forward with faith even when the path before us is murky and full of obstacles. If you do not take that first step then you may never find out whether it is the correct path, but if you do then it will soon become obvious whether it is or not. As my Pastor said on Sunday:

“If you live without risk, then you risk not living”