Why be good? The question that to many seems to have obvious incentives, but the reason holding them back has remained elusive. I will explain why.
The cry of this generation is that there is no objective truth; that my truth may be just as right as yours but may be completely different. This whole idea has spilled over into every segment of our society with the exceptions of business and most sciences. But in the realm of politics and culture, it seems to many people that it is noble to search for truth, but for someone to say that they have found it is to claim madness. How can this be? In my belief it is the intellectual laziness that our world has come to accept. If someone says that they are searching for truth, than there is no truth that they have to live by at that point. And sense this search for truth has become such a mysterious process that no one can deny them when they say they are. This enables someone to not have any truth. What benefit is there in this line of thinking? Very simple; once you lose truth you are free to do anything you please, because if truth is not a reality then morality becomes completely subjective. No one can call anyone else out on anything they do. We could not call 9/11, the Holocaust, Stalin’s Great Purge, Armenian Genocide, Nanking Massacre, Saddam’s Reign of Evil, the caste system in India and Japan, the Great Leap forward in China and the lot could be no different than when Alfred Blalock and Vivien Thomas curing the blue baby syndrome.
Not only does this argument not make emotional sense, but it lacks any sense of intellectual foundation. The idea that truth is subjective is denied by science and logic in every way. If I say that an operating medulla oblongata is essential for the human body to live and you would say it’s not, one of us would be wrong and the other would be right. But just because one of us is right, does that mean that either of us made that fact true? No, we are simple stating a fact as it pertains to a part of reality that we hold no control over. The things we say are either true or not true, it either goes along with reality and truth or it goes against it. But who is to decide what this reality is? It cannot be use for it existed before us. Only the Designer of reality can decide what statement go along with his creation.
God is this designer who has seen that reality is his alone to define. For us to think that we can take this exclusive right from him is to insult his very nature. This is why we must strive to be good, because to not do so is to degrade he who is of infinite worth. For if someone has been around for eternity, even if he has done almost nothing in those days, the simple fact that he has always been around for that long gives him more worth than the entire finite universe. And of this one whose worth is greater than all matter and beings combined, who are we as mere thing of flesh to assume we know better?
But the question still remains however, why is it then when set moral standards are applied by this infinitely righteous and worthy God, why wouldn’t good people follow it? The answer is horribly simple, we are not good. This is backed by simple life experience. You do not need to teach a young child to hit, steal, hate or be greedy or a young man to lust, kill or rape. They know how to from their very nature. But we spend billions of dollars a year to teach people to be good. If people were basically good, would this be needed? Of course not. Not convinced? Ask anyone what they would do if they knew they would die in a month. We could almost guarantee that at least one of these things would be considered bad by most people. We aren’t good because we want to be deep down; we are good because we fear the consequences of society and laws, who have realized that morality generally creates a more comfortable society.
This puts us in quite a dilemma, for if we are all bad and God is good, then we by all senses of justice should be condemned. We deserve punishment for our insults against him. And if we insult a infinitely worthy being, than we deserve an infinitely lasting and horrible punishment. But many would say “but a loving God forgives” Let me ask you this. If you heard someone had killed an entire family; Mothers, fathers, children, grandparents, extended family, the whole lot. And after conviction and all evidence saying he did it with mountains of evidence including the jury and the judge himself being witnesses was sentenced to a full pardon. What would you say about that judge? You would say he’s more wicked than the criminal himself almost. God couldn’t do that; he couldn’t just look the other way when a crime against that of infinite worth is done. Justice must be done by a good and perfect God or else he would cease to be perfect and good. One cannot love what is good without hating what is evil. For example, people love peace and so they hate war. I love justice and therefore I hate corruption. You cannot love both. So if God is good, and we are not then we should receive our full punishment from God. We deserve nothing less than an eternal punishment for our offenses against him. What can we do in this state? Good works aren’t good enough because we can only do them to other people, finite beings. An action done towards something finite will never match an act towards something infinite.
Under these circumstances we should despair, lose all hope, for there is no hope in us, for it is our own actions that have brought our condemnation. In that court room, that killer has no hope for mercy because the punishment must be carried out. But what if someone was willing to take the punishment for him?
Jesus: The God of Heaven and Earth, coming into the world to rescue us from ourselves. For not only was he in total compliance to the morality he created, he was infinitely worthy. Therefore he was able to pay for the crimes we had done. He took the sin that we should have paid for and do so himself. This means that we are no longer guilty of the transgressions if we trust him to save us from ourselves. But how do we know that he defeated our sin? How do we know that the price he paid was enough and Jesus didn’t fail, because 3 days later he rose up from the grave. Freedom.
