Man: The Good Being
A survey was taken in one of the state penitentiaries in the United States. It was conducted to find out what was the personal perception inmates have toward their own persons. One penitentiary, for example, has a collection of various offenders of the law. There are rapists, murderers, thieves, drug users and drug pushers, all of which come from almost every stripe and every race. The survey question put forward to them is, “are you a good person”? It was discovered that the great majority of these law breakers saw themselves as “basically good.”
One of the most watched game shows in the United States is “The Moment of Truth.” It is a game show where the contestants answer a series of 21 increasingly personal and embarrassing questions to receive cash prizes.
Prior to the show, a contestant is hooked up to a polygraph and asked more than 50 questions. Without knowing the results of the polygraph, he or she is asked 21 of those same questions again on the program, each becoming progressively more personal in nature. If the contestant answers honestly, according to the polygraph results, he or she moves on to the next question; however, should a contestant lie in his or her answer (as determined by the polygraph) or simply refuse to answer a question after it has been asked, the game ends.
For each tier of questions answered correctly, the contestant wins the corresponding amount of money. A contestant may stop at any time before any question is asked and collect their earnings, but once they hear a question, they must answer it or lose the game. Answering all 21 questions truthfully, as determined by the polygraph results, wins the jackpot of $500,000. The questions vary, increasing in difficulty and degree of personal nature of the questions.
In one of the episodes of the show, after the contestant revealed in her answers in a number of questions that she was a liar, a theif, and an adulterer among others, when asked if she thought she was a good person, this contestant readily and confidently said “Honestly, I think I am a good person.” And of course, because of her answering “yes”, she lost the game. The contestant failed the test.
Well, are we good people? Despite our blemishes and our failings, are we good people? In our most fragile moments what do we perceive ourselves to be? How about in our most common and passing of moments, who are we in our own eyes? Is our personal estimates of our own character, truth? Or do we like all men flatter ourselves?
Even you, professor in Christ, it’s no hard thing to pay lip-service to orthodoxy and yet have your heart and soul estranged from any regenerating work of the Spirit that casts self wholly upon Christ’s finished and perfect work. Perhaps even now, in truth, your heart, mind and spirit is still bound in depending in the righteousness of self. Deceiving yourself that you are trusting in Christ alone, when in truth, in the deepest recesses of your heart, you are trusting only partly in Christ, and partly in yourself. Therefore you flatter yourself that you are worthy of virtue. Flatter yourself that you are good?
I am sure that most of you are relatively good people. You don’t murder people as a constant course of practice. You don’t indulge yourselves in robbery as a primary manner of living. Most of you are well-mannered people. You hate to offend and belittle your neighbor. Though sometimes it cannot be helped when you make mistakes, still you try to make up for it in the other things you do, in the way you live your life as a whole.
There’s a similar character in the Bible that esteemed himself not to be that bad of a person. Coming from his lineage we can say that he had every right to do so. He labored and worked his portion thinking that God would be totally pleased with what his life and effort had to offer. The end of the story however was that of a tragedy. God rejected him, he in turn killed his brother in a fit of jealousy and hatred and was banished from the land (Genesis 4:1-16).
Cain saw himself as thoroughly fitting and deserving of God’s pleasure and blessing, but was disillusioned to find out that God saw no pleasing thing in his offering from his toil of the earth. He did not see nor did he understand that the only way he can approach God is by a substitute.
I’m afraid this is a great picture of the destinies of most souls in this world. Where men and women give all of themselves in passionate living, thinking that at the end of the road they will be rewarded greatly and positively for all that they have done in their life, but in the end of that journey they will discover that all their labors were all in vain. In the words of the puritan divine, Jonathan Edwards, in his sermon “Sinners in the hands of an Angry God”, he says:
All wicked men’s pains and contrivance which they use to escape hell, while they continue to reject Christ, and so remain wicked men, do not secure them from hell one moment. Almost every natural man that hears of hell, flatters himself that he shall escape it; he depends upon himself for his own security; he flatters himself in what he has done, in what he is now doing, or what he intends to do.
Every one lays out matters in his own mind how he shall avoid damnation, and flatters himself that he contrives well for himself, and that his schemes will not fail. They hear indeed that there are but few saved, and that the greater part of men that have died heretofore are gone to hell; but each one imagines that he lays out matters better for his own escape than others have done. He does not intend to come to that place of torment; he says within himself, that he intends to take effectual care, and to order matters so for himself as not to fail.
But the foolish children of men miserably delude themselves in their own schemes, and in confidence in their own strength and wisdom; they trust to nothing but a shadow. The greater part of those who heretofore (so far until today) have lived under the same means of grace, and are now dead, are undoubtedly gone to hell; and it was not because they were not as wise as those who are now alive: it was not because they did not lay out matters as well for themselves to secure their own escape. If we could speak with them, and inquire of them, one by one, whether they expected, when alive, and when they used to hear about hell, ever to be the subjects of misery: we doubtless, should hear one and another reply,
“No, I never intended to come here: I had laid out matters otherwise in my mind; I thought I should contrive well for myself — I thought my scheme good. I intended to take effectual care; but it came upon me unexpected; I did not look for it at that time, and in that manner; it came as a thief — Death outwitted me: God’s wrath was too quick for me. Oh, my cursed foolishness! I was flattering myself, and pleasing myself with vain dreams of what I would do hereafter; and when I was saying, Peace and safety, then sudden destruction came upon me.”
Is that not how all men are? We flatter ourselves that we will finally escape hell. We think that all our virtue, the goodness of our character and of who we are will earn heaven for our souls. Is that true however? Is it actually possible to earn heaven? To earn our way into heaven by virtue of our own merit? Why, yes! The Bible expressly teaches that there is a way in order for men to earn their way to eternal life (Luke 10:27-28).
Can anyone do so, however?
Hitler: The Good Person
How about Hitler? Now I don’t know Hitler personally. I haven’t lived long enough to be able to even see him in the morning paper. More than that I don’t know what’s in Hitler’s heart. But would it be wrong to say that “Hitler is a good person”? It is almost a known fact today that Hitler is one of the most evil persons that ever lived on this earth, if not the most. But then, who are we to judge Hitler’s heart? Who are we to say that he is an evil person? All that Hitler ever thought and did he accomplished with the good of humanity in mind in preparing the next step of human evolution and the preservation of the more advanced genotype. In his mind, death and sacrifices must be done for this greater good.
With the degree and amount of sacrifices Hitler made, should he not be made the pinnacle of what being good truly means? Can we not say that based on that Hitler very much deserves to be in Heaven?
Well, dear beloved, based on what?
Based on what standard would Hitler be earning Heaven? Based on what standard can men and women like you and I earn Heaven?
What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason? How infinite in faculty? In form and moving? How express and admirable? In Action, how like an Angel? In apprehension, how like a God? The beauty of theworld, the Parragon of Animals!
—The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark (Act II, Scene ii)
These are the words from Shakespeare’s famous work “Hamlet”. What a piece of work is a man! This is how most men see themselves. What dignified creatures, noble and true. How advanced and endless in intellect. How amazing in expression in all the works of his hands. How like an angel, how like a god! In our heart of hearts we are good a deeply virtuous!
This is a stark reality of what the 17th century French Philosopher and Writer, Voltaire, said:
If God created us in His image we have certainly returned the compliment.
—Voltaire (1694-1778)
It is now that we are creating God in our own image. We twist and mangle the definition of truth as personal preference. We mingle our own thoughts, opinions and emotions in a hot pot and whatever comes out of it is our definition of reality. Thus, in the same way, we have destroyed the very core of what good and evil is and placed our own selves as that core. Not anymore is right and wrong an objective reality that subdues all men under it. Good and evil is now freely defined by individuals depending on their tastes.
Sin has become a mere “problem”.
A crime has now become a “mistake”.
Error and heresy has now become “preference” and “opinion”.
But all this is but a lie. Men and women may revel in this form of relativism and existentialism, but in whatever they do in that paradigm of reality it will do them no good thing. No matter how differently we perceive truth and reality it will never change nor destroy the objective reality and truth.
It’s futile. A great display of perfect futility. It’s like talking to a radical agnostic that denies the existence of rocks. Smash a rock on his forehead and I’m sure he’ll most likely believe in the existence of rocks at that moment.
Yet, we as human beings do the same thing all the time. Even in the issue of our souls. “What piece of work is a man!”, says Hamlet. But you remember however that the story of Hamlet is a story of tragedy. The play, set in Denmark, recounts how Prince Hamlet exacts revenge on his uncle Claudius for murdering the old King Hamlet, Claudius’s own brother and Prince Hamlet’s father, and then succeeding to the throne and marrying Gertrude, the King Hamlet’s widow and mother of Prince Hamlet. The play vividly charts the course of real and feigned madness—from overwhelming grief to seething rage—and explores themes of treachery, revenge, incest, and moral corruption.
In the third act of the play, Hamlet eventually says radically differently of this previous statement concerning men as he talks to his wife:
Get thee to a nunnery: why wouldst thou be abreeder of sinners? I am myself indifferent honest; but yet I could accuse me of such things that it were better my mother had not borne me: I am very proud, revengeful, ambitious, with more offences at my beck than I have thoughts to put them in, imagination to give them shape, or time to act them in. What should such fellows as I do crawling between earth and heaven? We are arrant knaves (a deceitful and unreliable scoundrel), all; believe none of us. Go thy ways to a nunnery.
—The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark (Act III, Scene i)
Based on whose standard are we good people? Compare yourself to fellow human beings and I’m sure you’ll be in the same place after your time comes to die. But don’t be too sure that the place will be Heaven.
We are a people with no sense. We have no sense of what is truly right and what is truly wrong. We live in a world that defines and redefines all things as we go along in life. Whatever works for you go do it. What a great tragedy would the great majority of human beings awakened to when finally before the Judgment seat of God.
Based on whose standard are we good people? The standard of proud, revengeful, ambitious men? Murderous, lying, thieving and ego-centric men?
We are not to judge goodness with the standard of personal preference. We are to judge goodness with the unbending standard of objective and external truth. The unbending law of a thrice Holy and righteous God.
Coram Deo
As we live before the face of God this day, let us come to Him in humble prayer that He would reveal to us our own hearts as they really are. That, by His Spirit, we would not be strangers to our own souls. And if we find ourselves to be proud and self-trusting as we examine ourselves in the light of God’s Word, let us repent and cling to the foot of the Cross crying, “Apart from Christ I am nothing.”
Let us go on this life seeking to obey and please God by His own standards, as we are in Christ. For if we compare ourselves by ourselves we will awake in a tragic disillusionment.
Dear heavenly, gracious Father, grant us faith and grace that we may see ourselves in light of Your law; that we may understand life as it really is, sin in all it’s detestable colors, Your holiness and glory in all it’s majesty, and that we may really seek a Savior in Christ Jesus, the Lord. Do this by Your grace and for Your glory alone. Amen.
