I realized I never shared the promised post of my first book’s fourth chapter. The reason is that I had to make the final edits for my forthcoming book, The Garden of Scripture, and that was quite a busy process. Nevertheless, I want to keep my promise. So here is the fourth chapter from The Fruit That Turns The World Upside Down, which discusses goodness.
4. Goodness
Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.
Luke 12:32
The benefit of living in America’s oldest fishing port was having access to the best seafood whenever I wanted. My favorite, along with many locals, was The Causeway, which is located on, you guessed it, a causeway. It was crammed any night I went there, but many of the best seafood places there are the “hole in the wall” types. Maria’s was another one of my favorites, and I am convinced that the baked haddock au gratin I had there would be served in heaven.
Thinking about good food brings back a funny memory. One day, I was walking downtown to catch the bus when a man in a convertible pulled over to stop me and then asked, “Excuse me, sir? My friend told me about a place here in town that serves large portions of fish. Do you know what that place might be?”
I stood there dumbfounded that someone would come to Gloucester and ask such a question. Large portions of fish? It’s Gloucester! Every restaurant serves large portions of fish! Knowing he wasn’t a local, I replied, “Well, that’s a little difficult. Most places do that.” I could tell that wasn’t the answer he was hoping for. Looking resigned, he thanked me and took off down the road.
We, as humans, will risk things to find something we consider good. The man in the convertible risked looking ignorant to find good food. People who do parkour will risk their physical health to experience a good rush; promiscuous people will risk an S.T.D. or an unwanted pregnancy to have good sex, and drug addicts will risk their lives to find a good high. We are all in search of something good, something that will satisfy or satiate us. When I was single in Massachusetts, I was looking for someone good to love, but my problem was I didn’t understand that the goodness I wanted also needed a standard. I didn’t know that goodness was required to sustain me. People in the same position I was, even with differing circumstances, probably suffer from the same problem; wanting to have something or someone good but not knowing what goodness is. I had to find out the hard way what goodness isn’t.
When thinking with a fallen nature, we ask about goodness the wrong way. When we experience the grace of God given to us in Christ and have our consciences transformed through what the Holy Spirit does, we begin to understand how to define goodness. It’s easy to say that we should turn to Scripture if we want to do that. However, when we open the Bible, we become like the man in the convertible and discover that goodness is everywhere! Goodness? This is the Bible! We are hit with certain verses, though, where the Bible wants us to know God’s goodness in the most appetizing way.
I didn’t know much of the Bible in the first year of my marriage except for the Gospel. Anna, my wife, had gotten saved in high school and had the fortune of having a pastor-grandfather; she had much more knowledge than I did, so I had to rely on her for what the Bible said. One day, she said out loud, “taste and see that the Lord is good.” I laughed at her, thinking she was joking around, and then I stopped, puzzled, and asked, “wait, does it say that in the Bible?” I had no idea that it was part of Psalm 34. It both floored me and sparked my curiosity that the Bible would speak in such a way about God. Is the goodness of God like food? Yes! God’s goodness sustains us. It is part of the provision in the daily bread that Jesus tells us to ask for in the Lord’s prayer. God wants us to savor his goodness.
God wants us to delight in his goodness because it’s God’s character to be giving. The word Paul uses in Greek for goodness, agathosyne, in Galatians 5, means unselfishness, and some translations of the Bible use the word generosity instead of goodness. Still, the point is that biblical goodness gives over and above what people typically think it should. Throughout Scripture, God is pouring out his goodness, sometimes at his own expense. The ultimate example of God’s goodness is what Christ did for us on the cross, sacrificing his life so that those who trust him can be reconciled to God, live free from sin, and be made holy. The goodness Christ displayed to humanity in his self-sacrificial giving was and is sufficient for all, even if some people will reject that goodness. That is, however, the goodness God wants us to know and what he’s willing to do for us to have that understanding.
Since we are created in the image of God, however, we are called to participate in the same kind of goodness. If our Creator is good and gives us goodness characterized by unselfishness, the honorable and righteous thing to do is to imitate the same type of unselfishness. I think that’s why some translations say generosity instead of goodness. But to be honest, generosity is difficult for me; I rely heavily on my wife to know to whom we will show generosity. She and her friends are great at organizing and being Christ's hands and feet. As far as strangers go, the most generous I’ve been is giving someone begging for money on the exit ramp of a freeway the cold water I had packed myself for lunch when it was blazing hot outside. Then there were those at the T-stations in Massachusetts I’d give money to if they’d ask, but I never knew how they’d spend it. It is somewhat of a far cry from what people had done for me in the past.
Generous Goodness
In my late teens, while living in Minnesota, I had an incredibly rough time financially. My troubles were mainly my fault. Before my parents moved to Massachusetts to be with my maternal grandfather, they worked out a deal with my older brother and I where we could still live at the house and pay the mortgage every month. Good in theory, but I was 18 and had just “finished” high school. I say “finished” because I didn’t graduate; I was a few credits shy of getting a diploma even though my school let me walk across the stage. I refused to be a super-senior and attend another semester of high school, so I tried summer school instead. What I’m saying is that I was a slacker. I hadn’t taken my education seriously, and my lack of motivation translated into how I felt about working. I had a job, but I didn’t put as much effort forth as I could have; I was only working twelve hours a week most of the time. I also didn’t have a car, which made getting to work difficult, and I wasn’t making enough to buy one; I also didn’t have a driver’s license…
Needless to say, because I wasn’t getting enough hours, I couldn’t cover my portion of the mortgage. I was writing the checks every month, but they bounced. Since I was so ignorant of how checking accounts worked, I didn’t know that meant the mortgage wasn’t getting paid. My parents had to cover my portion and the fees associated with my bounced checks. At the same time, my bank was coming after me for being hundreds of dollars in the hole. They threatened to close my account if I didn’t pay the cash. I couldn’t write the checks to help pay for the house if I didn’t have an account.
I was impoverished, and I could barely afford to buy food. I lost about 30 pounds in one month because I could only eat bread dipped in salsa (the only thing in the fridge) and Ramen noodles. My girlfriend at the time, a senior in high school, knew what I was going through and became worried about my health and finances. Little did I know that she had organized a fundraising campaign at school to help me get out of debt. After she left school one day, she stopped by and surprised me with a card, and in the card, there was a whole bunch of checks and cash. Because of her concern and the donations raised, I could get out of debt and put more food in the house. My parents ultimately had to sell the house because my bad checks had caused too many issues. Shortly after my girlfriend and her friends saved me, the store I worked at got a new manager, and I received many more hours. Then, I was able to move into a friend’s house for a few months before I eventually moved to Massachusetts.
What I’m going to say next probably isn’t the wisest thing that married men should say; my high school girlfriend was sort of like my wife, who I also don’t deserve, in that she brought out the best in me. I didn’t deserve my high school girlfriend; she was way too good for me, and I put her through a lot of stupid stuff because of my willful ignorance. Even though I didn’t deserve her, she was good to me and showed her goodness in what she did to help get me out of debt. That is essentially what the character of goodness is. In talking about goodness in the context of the Spirit’s fruit, we find it’s intrinsically tied to grace. It generously shares itself even if another person hasn’t done anything to deserve what is being given. Like love, goodness is affective because it works in tandem with love; it turns our hearts towards our neighbors, causes us to share their burdens, and gives us the desire to help alleviate those burdens.
Moral Goodness
Goodness has another quality, too. It is standing up for what is morally right even if what is moral isn’t clearly recognized or popular. Sometimes, this stand can be perceived as troublemaking. A myth is circulating that the church should be a passive bystander since it is about salvation, grace, and love. The people who perpetuate the myth have never read the Bible well, nor have they bothered to look at church history. Jesus was a troublemaker because he delivered the Good News, and ever since the day of Pentecost, Christians have been stirring up good trouble in the world.
One of my favorite passages, which highlights good troublemaking, is in Acts 17. In Thessalonica, Paul and Silas had been preaching the Gospel, and many Jews and Greeks began to believe in Jesus, which upset the local Jewish leadership. In a failed effort to track Paul and Silas down, they captured a man named Jason and some other believers. When the religious leaders brought them before the city authorities, they accused Jason and the others of “turning the world upside down.” But little did they know that’s what the Good News of the Gospel aims to do. In their jealousy, however, they mischaracterize the nature of the work of the Gospel by only telling half-truths. Jason’s accusers claimed he and his friends were “acting against the decrees of Caesar, saying that there is another king, Jesus” (17:7). Early Christians did preach Jesus as King. Still, if those leaders were paying attention, they would’ve heard that Jesus’ kingdom is not of this world. Paul and the Apostles believed they were continuing to carry out the mission of Jesus, who the prophet Isaiah prophesied about, saying:
I will give you as a covenant for the people, a light for the nations, to open the eyes that are blind, to bring out the prisoners from the dungeon, from the prison those who sit in darkness (Isaiah 42:6–7).
The Apostles knew there would be resistance against the message of the Gospel because of how fallenness corrupted every institution in the world. However, they believed that the Gospel of Jesus Christ could dismantle it anyway, even if what they were saying and doing looked foolish to the world (1 Corinthians 1:18–31).
The Goodness of God that the Gospel frames is still causing good trouble today. It causes discomfort in the world and, unfortunately, can also cause uneasiness in the church. One of the leading examples of who’s a good troublemaker is former gymnast Rachael Denhollander. In 2016, Rachael was one of the leading women who confessed she’d been sexually abused by former Doctor Larry Nassar, who worked for the USA gymnastics team. Because of her bravery, over one hundred women had the courage to come forward and reveal the abuse they suffered at the hands of Nassar.[1] As a result, Nassar was convicted of his crimes and sentenced to sixty years in prison.
Rachael’s final statement in court is famous for invoking her Christian faith in motivation to seek justice and forgiveness. One of the most profound statements in her final statement in front of Nassar was telling him and the courtroom that what would help her run the furthest from him was to do what was right.[2] She hoped that what she did would trigger something in Nassar to seek salvation. However, Rachael quickly pointed out that it isn’t good deeds that bring on God’s salvation but repentance.[3] Rachael is right, of course, and since the Gospel stirs up good trouble, it will only reach its true ends when those who have heeded the conviction of the Holy Spirit and have admitted their guilt and turned towards God in repentance partner with those acts.
Rachael’s good work continued past the Nassar trial, even helping other women while her case was going on. Not only was she advocating for the rights of those who suffered at the hands of Nassar, but she also began to advocate for people who experienced sexual abuse at the hands of pastors and other church leaders.[4] Shockingly, it wasn’t the allegations she brought against Nassar that alienated her from part of her Christian community, but her advocacy of the people abused in the church. Rachael has been vilified and called libelous things because she is compelled by her faith to do what is right.[5] As has been seen since the revelation of abuse in the Roman Catholic church, people don’t like to question their favorite ministers suddenly, and ministers who’ve built a reputation don’t like having their image challenged.
The moral goodness of God, though, has constantly confronted the establishment. The goodness of God in a moral context speaks to justice. The justice of God in the Gospel means for many that Christ’s sacrifice on the cross appeases God’s justice toward our sins. However, the goodness of God’s justice in the Gospel is multifaceted. It isn’t only the justice against sin that is appeased by Christ’s crucifixion. The good justice of the Gospel also confronts evil, which enables the oppressed to be delivered from the sin committed against them by others. All sin must be called out. Whether in the secular world by the Spirit or even the church’s sins by the people of God, who the Spirit and scripture guide, sin will be called out.
The goodness of God compels us to seek out the truth, no matter how ugly and uncomfortable the truth can be, so that justice can be done. As Denhollander has found out, though, and others such as Jennifer Greenberg, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and Martin Luther King Jr. have found out, it comes at a cost. If God is good, though, and if the Gospel is good, we know that his grace is sufficient to carry us through to the other side, even if it’s at the end of everything.
Insignificantly Good
On a different note, sometimes I like to think about outer space. A few years ago, I had a question; what is the purpose of everything else in the universe that isn’t the planet Earth? The sun is essential because it provides light and heat; the moon is important because it controls the tides and provides occasional light for nighttime travelers. The stars became important because humanity used them to chart courses and determine their direction. The heavens have also fueled our imaginations. We’ve told countless stories and created numerous mythologies based on what we see in the sky.
All of these things revolve around us somehow, though. Does the universe have any other function than to make us wonder? In Psalm 19:1, David says, “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.” I agree with David, and so has every artist, poet, and photographer, even if they’ve never said it out loud. When we look farther into space with our telescopes and gaze upon the Helix Nebula or the Milky Way galaxy, we are further entranced by the universe’s mysteries and the creativity of God.
Reading about outer space is quite different. We are taken out of our geocentric thinking and told that gases have collided to form nebulas and that radiation permeates star systems to create an inhospitable environment for life. Astronomers are continually warning us that solar flares are bombarding our ionosphere. We are also told that when large stars collapse, they transform into black holes that consume everything around them; even light can’t escape the vacuum they create. On the whole, the universe seems violent.
Additionally, the universe is extraordinarily vast. It is estimated that two hundred billion galaxies of the observable universe exist alongside ours. A theory is also gaining popularity in the scientific community, and science fiction is called the multiverse. The idea is that our universe is only one of many universes we can’t detect yet. So, not only is the universe violent, but some also believe we are not the only universe. I don’t know about you, but the interstellar violence and size of the cosmos make me feel insignificant. It reminds me of the photo called The Pale Blue Dot, which was taken by the Voyager 1 spacecraft. In the picture, the planet seems no more discernable than a speck of dust illuminated by a beam of light.
The “pale blue dot” photo was so thought-provoking that it inspired the late astronomer Carl Sagan to name his book after the image. Sagan tries to shock his readers into caring for our world through science more than we do, but Sagan only adds to the feeling of insignificance:
Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.[6]
Sagan’s comments align with the popular science fiction films that assure Earth is a backwater planet. Humans are just the rednecks of the universe; our ways are backward, and we deserve to be toyed with by beings of higher intelligence. It all sounds like the quiet rantings of a chain-smoking beatnik sitting in a dark corner of a dimly lit coffee shop who just finished reading five postmodern novels back-to-back.
God deals with the insignificant all the time, though, and it’s another way he shows his goodness; Scripture is a witness to this. As Jesus began accumulating followers, a man named Philip went to find his friend, Nathanael. When Philip finds his friend, he says, “We’ve found the Messiah, Jesus of Nazareth.” Nathanael quips in reply, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth” (John 1:46)?
Nathanael gave such a dismissive and arrogant response. I’ve done the same. When I lived on the reservation in New York, I struggled with the same attitude, not understanding how deeply the historical struggles impacted the people. I was blind to the people seeking its welfare. I, too, was like Nathanael asking, could anything good come of this town?
Let’s say that the critics are correct, and there could be a billion other places in the universe that are way better for hosting life. Perhaps a giant solar system with giant planets containing a natural beauty we can barely grasp with our imaginations. Yet, would God not care about all parts of creation if God did indeed create the universe? And what if, knowing our hearts, he picked the most insignificant planet, a pale blue dot, to show us that nothing he creates is trivial?
If nothing God creates is insignificant, it means that everyone is visible to him. It means that I’m significant, and a child in Nicaragua picking through a garbage dump is significant. It also means a sex-trafficking victim is significant, a child with Down syndrome is significant, the unborn to the elderly are significant, abusers and addicts and criminals and unbelievers are significant. We don’t get to put constraints on what God views as significant. The first chapter of the Bible’s first book shows us with the Hebrew word tob that God took delight in everything that he created, including humanity, as troublesome as we can be. We don’t need to be significant in our eyes or anyone else’s; we need to be who God created us because he delighted in our creation. And if we’re lost, our good God provided the way to save us.
[1] “My Larry Nassar Testimony Went Viral. But There’s More to the Gospel Than Forgiveness,” Interview by Morgan Lee, Christianity Today, January 31, 2018.
[2] Rachel Denhollander, “Rachael Denhollander Gives Powerful, Final Victim Statement in Nassar Sentencing,” January 24, 2018, video of trial sentencing,
[3] Ibid.
[4] Lee, Denhollander Interview.
[5] Ibid.
[6] Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space (New York: Ballantine Books, 2010). To be fair to Sagan, he wasn’t just reacting to religion, he was also reacting to the superstitious nature of the New Age movement which focuses on things like healing crystals and manifesting dreams. However, I wish he had looked to the Christianity that was beyond the loud Evangelical fundamentalist Christianity that helped draft his statement. He may have found a faith with more wonder that he realized.