Anthony Otten
  • About
  • Writing
    • Fiction
    • Nonfiction
  • News
  • Contact

There Are No Good People (And Why That's Good News)

9/1/2014

0 Comments

 
Patrick, Spongebob, donuts, devil, angel, conscience, decisions, good, evil, cartoonsjestcomedy.tumblr.com
“I pay my taxes like everybody should…”

“Just because I’m not perfect…”

“Well, I didn’t mean to shoot him…”

Maybe you have defended or justified yourself with one of the above lines. I have to hope you didn’t use the third one (I’m talking to YOU, Dick Cheney). It is comforting to externalize evil, to believe it an out-there force embodied in terrorists and abusive parents, while our families and friends are flawed but basically good people.

That belief is wrong.

There are no good people. Truly. And I’m not speaking on my own authority here.

Romans 3:23 tells us that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,” a familiar line, but earlier in the chapter, Paul writes more shockingly, “…We have previously charged both Jews and Greeks that they are all under sin. As it is written: ‘There is none righteous, no, not one; there is none who understands; there is none who seeks after God’” (v. 9-12).

This is a hard saying, to use the words of Jesus’s first listeners. But Jesus himself affirmed that “no one is good but One, that is, God” (Mark 10:18) in answering a man who called him “Good Teacher” (v. 17) in merely human terms.

I have only defended this view as scriptural so far, and not used reason to support it. So for those of you who disagree, and believe that people are fundamentally good but just sometimes misguided, I have a question: Where does evil come from?

You might say it grows out of wrong societal arrangements or bad ideas, but if people are good, then how do societies and ideas become corrupt in the first place? Satan, perhaps? Remember, the devil only tempted Eve to take the apple; he didn’t tear it off the branch and force her to partake of rebellion.

You might deny that evil really exists, and say that right and wrong are simply words for what is desirable or not, but in doing so you trifle with a deeply ingrained part of the human moral experience. You reduce the truth to something ephemeral and individual that will never be sufficient for guiding us to self-giving decisions of integrity and love.

Good is whatever ought to be, regardless of our own desires or inclinations. Everything about God ought to be as it is, and therefore he cannot be evil. But people are limited, and so also is their goodness; therefore the potential for evil permeates our being. Reformed theology calls this total depravity—this doesn’t mean that good is absent from us, but that we are incapable of saving ourselves from selfish ruin. No one enters heaven or gets his prayers heard by being a good person. Only Jesus achieved that, and our sole recourse is to bow in the shadow of his cross.

But here’s why this is all good news: we can quit deluding ourselves.

If we realize no one is a good person, we can quit punishing ourselves for the moments in which we fail. When we curse, or say a venomous word, or have a selfish thought, we no longer have to be surprised and disgusted at ourselves. We can quit living with the expectation that some hidden goodness waits within us, and begin relying only on God’s goodness as our foundation for morality and love.

Peter was prideful.

Moses was doubtful.

The woman thrown at Jesus’s feet in the temple was unfaithful.

And I am a sinner like them.

What are you? God knows. But whatever your particular evil, thank him that we can stop living with this illusion, and start living in greater dependence on him.
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    About

     Anthony Otten has published stories in Jabberwock Review, Valparaiso Fiction Review, Wind, Still: The Journal, and others. He has been a finalist for the Hargrove Editors' Prize in Fiction. He lives in Kentucky.

    Enter your email address:

    Delivered by FeedBurner

    RSS Feed

    Resources for Writers
    Duotrope
    New Pages
    Poets & Writers
    ​
    Query Shark
    ​
    The Review Review
    Recent Posts:

    Why I'm Choosing the Catholic Church

    The Struggle to Stay Real as Writers and Humans

    When People Stopped Being Interesting to Write About

    How to Avoid God, Unsuccessfully

    3 Ways to Use History in Your Fiction

    Who's Afraid of Death?

    Jesus and The "Illegals"

    The Hardest Command

    Grasping the Resurrection

    Radical Fairness

    Story Published

    The King of Outsiders

    When Your Idol Falls

    Our Not-Guilty Verdict

    Nobody Dies for a Lie

    Would You Be The Doorman?

    Judge Not

    Publication News

    What is a Blessing?

    Real Obedience is Love
    ​
    Jesus was Inevitable


    The Death of Envy
    ​

    What God Really Wants

    Submission and Query Resources for Writers

    Hearing His Voice

    The World Overcome

    Honestly, God: Praying Our True Feelings

    When God Gives Us What We Want
     
    Killing Isaac

    Archives

    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    September 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013

    Categories

    All
    Agents
    Bible
    Books
    Christ
    Christianity
    Church
    Classics
    Culture
    Description
    Education
    Envy
    Faith
    Fiction
    First Post
    Genesis
    Genres
    God
    Gospels
    Heaven
    Hell
    History
    Media
    News
    Nonfiction
    Novel
    Novels
    People
    Prayer
    Publications
    Revision
    Salvation
    Series
    Short Short Stories
    Short Stories
    Storytelling
    Thomas More
    Writing Advice
    Writing Advice
    Writing Exercises

Copyright © Anthony Otten
  • About
  • Writing
    • Fiction
    • Nonfiction
  • News
  • Contact