“To write better you must develop your taste for truth. You have to pay more attention to what you really think, feel, see and want.”
― Jonathan Price, Put That in Writing

In a state of frustration, she threw the giant question at me.

“Who is good?”

We had been talking about people and life, and how hard both really are, and how disappointment teems in them both. I could tell her question was part petition, part accusation, and mostly pain.

How do I answer that? How do I answer that?

There’s philosophy.

There’s pop psychology.

There’s depth psychology.

There’s mores and customs.

I am a hack with some background in Christian theology. I have my view on how I believe good is defined. She knows this.

Was Lincoln good? Is Billy Graham good? What about the convenience store clerk who shot a late-night robber in self-defense? Or any and every man in America who has looked at pornography in the last week- are any of them good? The entrepreneur guy who knows how to leverage and maximize profitability in his niche stores- is he good? Or the woman who won’t tell her family that her boyfriend beats her at times because he gets drunk, but she loves him and is trying to help him- is she good?

Progress says good, like everything else, is a quantifiable, relative property. It is transient and fluctuates relative to the occasion and the situation. It just depends.

The question really is a giant one to ponder, and to try and soberly answer.

Most people prefer to work with good people. And hope to meet and marry a good person. And at least be connected to a few people.

When is someone considered good? And what makes them qualify as good? Because there seems to yet be a lot of shiftiness out there. Technological advancement and the multiplication of human knowledge seem to both have little effect on the progress of human morality. Theft, rape, and murder hang around human communities like they always have for all of the same reasons. Human beings still have a proclivity to want and to take from others what does not belong to them.

Is a person good because they recognize they aren’t naturally good, and they strive to be good anyways? Or are they good because they don’t even think about being good and just live by their inner code? Or are they good because they do live striving to keep a particular code?

I know theologically I am hard, and my position is out of vogue. People are generally not good, of their own devices.

I also know I am older and weathered and jaded and cynical, the recipient of my allotment of blows in life.

But the Book still asserts it, even if the words are aged, old school, conceptually dated.

“Indeed, there is no one on earth who is righteous, no one who does what is right and never sins (Ecclesiastes 7:20)”.

“As it is written: “There is no one righteous, not even one; there is no one who understands; there is no one who seeks God. All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one (Romans 3:10-12).”

It’s challenging to see the same vista if you stand at two different viewpoints.

I am familiar with the pain of disappointment, the feelings of betrayal, of inadequacy, of questioning.

“Hey- I am sorry you are feeling down today. I hope I didn’t do anything to bring it on or make it worse. I want you to be strong and healthy and happy.”

“Thanks.”

“Is there anything I can do for you?”

Pause.

“I’m good.”