We Are Not Good

"Santa Claus Is Coming to Town" is a popular secular Christmas song. Santa Claus, as most people know, is supposed to come on Christmas Eve to give wonderful presents to all good girls and boys. Although this is just a fictional story, it gives rise to a very interesting question: how do we define "good"?

People may have different ideas of what it means to be good "good," depending on where they live. In some cultures, being "good" is based on how well you take care of your family. Other cultures define being "good" by how noble, pure, or upstanding you are. At various times, people who were viewed as "good" by their culture owned salves or mistreated people of lower castes. Because of the fleshy world we live in, "good" is all too often defined by the people with power.

God, however, is not interested in our definitions of "good." Jesus tells us plainly in Mark 10:18 that "no one is good-except God alone." In this vein, James Smith declares, "As bad as man was, and God knew the worst of him- yet knowing the worst of him, he had a purpose of mercy toward him in his heart, and that purpose was to provide a way of salvation for him." We would much prefer to live as good, decent people. No one likes to think of oneself as a bad person. But refusing to accept who we are and what we need-if we really examine ourselves-will only hurt us in the long run.

Living Life