I Am A Good Person, I Do Not Need Religion!
Is often cited as a basis for rejecting the claims of Christianity and rejecting it as a valid world view.
But Am I A Good Person?
But what does it mean to be a good person?
How do you measure that?
What does good mean?
At Least I Am Not An Axe Murderer!
This will be often stated as a tongue in cheek idea of a moral comparison, but there is actually more truth here than there first appears on the surface.
Here is the question:
Why choose an axe murderer to compare ourselves against?
That is a pretty loose standard?
We don’t have to aim very high to beat that standard...
Better Than Those Others
Have you ever noticed how we like to compare ourselves against others, that we will look at something that someone else has done wrong?
That that becomes our measuring stick?
If we are ‘gooder’ than most other people do we become good?
Guilt
Why do we even feel guilt?
When we do something wrong, why does it create such a negative emotional response in us?
After the crime, why do we feel remorse?
In fact, this is such a normal reaction, that when someone does not feel guilt, we will label them as a psychopath, or a sociopath, someone who cannot relate to others in an emotionally healthy way.
Measuring Our Goodness
So how do we measure if we are good?
- Have you ever lied?
- Have you ever stolen?
- Have you ever hurt someone?
- Have you ever dishonoured your parents in some way?
If we answer yes to any of these, can we be justified in saying we are good?
But Why Should These Be My Standard?
These standards are from the 10 commandments, a moral standard and code for mankind, that God has given us.
Without that standard, all we do is re-invent our own standard and now we are back to being better than the axe-murderer.
The axe-murderer can do the same thing, he could say, at least I never killed more than one person, at least I am not a serial killer!
This is what happens when we don’t have an absolute moral foundation, we will adopt a standard that suits our activities.
But if that is a false standard, how does that benefit us, all we are doing is deceiving ourselves that we are good.
Why Do We Desire To Be Seen As Good?
We are created to be pleasing to God, to be in His moral image.
There is also in each of us,the desire to be approved of by society, by those around us (we call it peer pressure), but as values become more and more subjective in society, as mankind seeks to define his own moral standard, the behavioural standards we adhere to become lower and lower.
That desire for approval is healthy, as long as it is tied to an absolute moral standard, if it is not, then it can become unhealthy.
- Good can then become, good in the eyes of a gang, a violent gang.
- Good can then become good, in the eyes of a group of drug users.
- Good can then become good, in a society that attacks another society without cause.
When we replace approval from God, with approval from mankind, that is when society starts to break down.
Judgement
Judgement is also something that we have a deep sense of, it drives the guilt and the fear in us when we do something wrong.
We have a natural fear of judgement.
Especially when we realise how high God’s moral standard is!
The Problem
So now we have a problem, we know we are not good, we know that God will judge us, based on the Ten Commandments, how do we escape that judgement?
Do we become ‘gooder’ and earn our way into God’s good books?
Is there even a way for us to escape judgement?
An Exchange
When we understand the enormity of our selfishness and compare it to God's standard, we realise that the smallest flaw, the smallest treasured piece of selfish motivation, is enough to warrant judgement and condemnation.
So what can we do?
In the Bible, it is explained to us, that judgement does indeed have to come, that every sin has to be paid for.
But that we have someone who was willing to take our place for that judgement. Someone who was willing to step in and take that punishment for us, so that we would not have to face it ourselves.
Finding Goodness
This is at the core of Christianity, the message of Jesus Christ paying for our sins, so that we can be forgiven and restored into relationship with God, both in this life and in eternity.
In Christianity, you are not trying to be good to earn God’s favour.
You are looking to Jesus Christ, to grant you freedom from the sin and guilt and to give you ‘goodness’
When He died on the cross, for you and for me, that was exactly what He did, He took our sins and exchanged it for His goodness.
Come To Jesus
So instead of asking am I good, or comparing ourselves to others, if we come to Jesus Christ and receive Him, we can be cleansed, restored and set free from the condemnation we are so desperate to escape from.
We can be made good, as God originally intended us to be.