So Be Good for Goodness Sake

The "bad" kids had the stereotypical purple hair, mohawks, skull paraphernalia and skateboards. Of course, skateboards.  The "good" boy wanted to be like them and some how we ended up at Noah's ark. At the end of the movie, the "good" boy sees the bad influence those kids might be and walks away as if to say,  I'm better than them. Trust me, I'm all for wholesome Christian kids entertainment, but I have a serious problem with what we might be teaching them.

I asked my 8 year old son, Cannon, to come chat for a minute after viewing the show. I asked him casually, "So, do you think Jesus loves those bad kids?" "No!" he quickly answered as if disgusted by the very thought. "Does he love you?" I probed. "Yes." he replied. "Why?" I continued, "Does he love you because you are good?" "Yes." he said, a bit more sheepishly. And with that my suspicions confirmed and my work cut out for me.

There was never any mention of how God felt about those kids. Never any mention of how the "good" kid might influence their lives through the love of Jesus. Never any mention of being a light in the darkness. Just the same old, same old, Christian mantra, stay away from the bad, lest you become like them. Sure, I get all the age appropriateness and the nuances of teaching younger kids right from wrong, but we are raising them from a very early age to have an "us and them" mentality that when they are old, they will not depart from. 

I remember overhearing a conversation earlier this year between an older, male, Christian, blood relative (who shall remain anonymous) and my Christian nephew. My son also happened to be taking in this conversation. It went something like this: "So, you go to public school huh?" "Yeah." responds my nephew. "So how do you deal with the bad kids? You don't ever associate with those kinds of kids do you?" "I mostly keep to myself." said Nephew. "Good for you." Blood dude replied. At this point, I couldn't help but interject..."Unless you want to tell them about Jesus, huh?"A bit of nervous laughter ends the conversation. Obviously, in this person's mind, they were suggesting what was good and righteous, and I could not believe what I was hearing! What about the example of Jesus? What about those kid's souls? Again, what about being a light that cannot be hidden? You can't be a light that cannot be hidden while hiding!!!

This post is about to piggyback off my previous post "Beware of God", so this could be considered the continuation of. If you haven't read that, please go read it and come back, otherwise you will be lost. That said, at this point, we will take a bit of a detour on this current train of thought, but we will be back on the main track by the end. So hunker down, buckle up and stay with me.

The problem with the "knowledge of good and evil" that we picked up at the fall, is that we become the keepers of the standard of said good and evil. We define these in our minds based on our understanding of what is good or evil based on tradition, laws, common sense, customs, conscience and even the Bible. The problem with this is that we become our own moral compass and therefore perpetuate our hopelessly flawed ideology and often self-righteously inflict it on others. Christians are not the only ones with this mixed up notion. Even Santa Clause shuns the naughty ones. So this idea of good and evil changes from person to person based on their perspective. When Jesus died to redeem us to relationship with our creator, God, He provided a way of understanding His heart and mind and to have full revelation of what is truly good through the person of the Holy Spirit.

Funny thing - I know a lot of non-believers who are morally, not just good, but better than most Christians. They out give, out love, out serve, out sacrifice and out compassion some of the best of us Saints. So this actually proves my point. Good is not always good. In fact, Satan can use our idea of good for evil. He use our personal concept of good to deceive us, bind us and even use us to carry out his evil plans. (i.e. Oprah, Westboro) I actually believe he will use this very thing to deceive people into worshipping the anti-christ during the tribulation, but that is another post altogether. 

Need proof? Let me give you a few Biblical examples: Peter when Jesus told him about death, "took him aside and began to rebuke him. 'Never, Lord!' he said. 'This shall never happen to you!' Jesus turned and said to Peter, 'Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; you do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns." Totally legit that Peter would think it was good and right to say such a thing to Jesus, no? And when Mary poured out the costly oil on Jesus' feet in worship, Judas said it should have been sold and the money given to the poor. Seems good and righteous enough, but it was evil because he did not have in mind the concerns of God but merely human concerns. 

Still a stretch, you might say? Well, let me just say that there is a way that seems right to a man but it leads to death (Prov 14:12, 16:25). I know because for 35 years I lived to be "good" and it brought me nothing but death. At the end of those years, I could only describe myself as dead. I did everything on the list the "gatekeepers of good" laid out for me. I followed all the rules and suffered and sacrificed and gave and obeyed and obeyed and obeyed...and died. My color palette was black and white...no gray...God forbid, red, blue or yellow. I was being good for Jesus, for goodness sake. But it was all dead works (Heb. 9:14) motived by self (knowledge) not good works (Mat 5:16) which are motived by the Holy Spirit (revelation).

So while our source of good is self (the tree of the knowledge of good and evil) we are actually spreading death but when God becomes our source of good (the tree of life) we begin spreading life. Thus, as you may have gathered, the things we think and feel are good, moral and righteous may not be so much. Only God is good and anything that comes from Him is good. So to raise our children based on this fallen way of thinking about good and evil is, well, not good. It's really motived by fear. Fear that they may actually make a mistake if they get to close to "those" kids. God forbid our kids make a mistake...they might actually need a Savior. Yep, I said it. 

So the moral of this story, kids, is good does not equal Godly. Because of grace, we cannot care more about being "good" than we care about being like Jesus. And those "bad" kids? Jesus loves them because He made them and is wanting us to tell them so. They may only be "bad" because they don't know they are loved and important and valuable. Cannon now knows. He knows now that Jesus doesn't love him because he's good but because he belongs to Him. God loves His kids and wants a relationship with all of them...red, yellow, black, white, purple hair, mohawks and all. Now maybe Cannon will get to share that with the "bad' kids someday.

So I say, let the Holy Spirit guide your lives. Then you won’t be doing what your sinful nature craves. The sinful nature wants to do evil, which is just the opposite of what the Spirit wants. And the Spirit gives us desires that are the opposite of what the sinful nature desires. These two forces are constantly fighting each other, so you are not free to carry out your good intentions. But when you are directed by the Spirit, you are not under obligation to the law of Moses. Gal. 5:16-18