Spoiler Alert: Not intending to give the show away, I do provide descriptions here that do explain some of the plot of “The Good Place”. Read on if that is okay with you. If you haven’t watched the show yet, it is excellent, and I’d encourage you to check it out.

One of my favorite shows of recent ilk is NBC’s “The Good Place”.

I don’t watch much network television, but a few friends at work talked up this show pretty heavily after season one, and learning of its premise and about its quality of intelligent comedy, I had to check it out. Now I look forward to watching each episode each week.

Created by the deep and crazy telecomic Michael Schur, “The Good Place” is a about four people who die and enter the afterlife, only to discover that once there for a while, what they thought was heaven turns out to be, in fact, hell. But in their transition(s) into the afterlife- they actual undergo many as the experimental destination they are sent to is rebooted over and over- they are met by Michael, a pleasant underworld architect (demon) who finds, through thousands of versions of their entrance into “The Good Place”, that he both appreciates and likes these fascinating creations, and if he can, he would like to help them- and perhaps himself- to get to The Good Place.

The question kicked about in each lighthearted episode is wonderfully simple but also eternally cardinal within most every human heart: what must one do to go to heaven?

Most definitely a comedy, the show nevertheless is a philosophic survey of human attempts to answer that critical question, and at times, the show’s humans, despite their dark demise, strive to be proponents of one principal or another in an effort to work the system they have discovered that defines who gets into the Good Place and who doesn’t.

They learn that basically admittance to heaven occurs based on a point system, where those having some measure more of good than of bad on their ledger can enter the Good Place.

The show is an entertaining concept. The cosmology of Schur’s universe is heavily defined by the Bad Place which, as it is shown to us, is overseen by architects and accountants. We meet a Judge at some point who, in solitary chambers in an alternative location or plain, adjucates over entrance cases. God, as conveyed through the major religions, we are familiar with, isn’t really an active player (to this point, in three midst of season 3) in the program. We are, however, familiarized with an underworld which is rife with counters to our popular religious conceptions of the place. Michael is a metro planner of his own unique conception of a suitable place of torture for a collection of subjects- subjects who are never quite crippled by the tricks and traps that are part of his nefarious neighborhood- a neighborhood that looks more like a regentrified yuppie enclave than a corner of hell. But, of course, that is a compelling ruse of evil: hell aspires to be as close to heaven as possible, but in a totally cheap, incomplete, defective knock-off way.

I see the show as Schur’s well-intended attempt to reassert this cardinal question into modern culture, and through the gentle vehicle of comedy, to ask us as well, “what does it mean to be good?”

Or perhaps, “Why be good?”

We live in times where quite often the question of what it means to be good is shoved hard aside for more important cultural inquiries that usually relate to the securing of prestige, comfort, prominence, and power.

Schur is asking us, “What is the relevance of good?”, and if it is still important to us today, “What does it mean to be good?”

This is a crucial question for our times- where relativism is rampant, special interests are superior, partisan pursuits are blindly eschewed, and quality and morality is awarded to the most powerful or the most popular or the most pretty or the most profound.

What does it mean for one person to be good?

Shcur and his cast will one day wrap up our tour of the afterlife with some delightful anecdotes, helpful insights, and some wonderful dramatic turns that make us giggle and forget our day to day concerns. But hopefully the show helps us to continue to ask that question to ourselves.

As a Christian- as a human being bent and broken by faulty thinking and faulty living but dedicated to a Christian view of life and eternity- my view of good and the Good Place hinges on my acceptance of the Gulf offered in Scripture. Where Judaism, parent of my faith, heavily endorses a model somewhat like Schur’s in “The Good Place”- merit precedes salvation, one of Christ’s significant works theologically is that he came to replace that model- one where an individual earned an eternity based on their works- for his revision, where one earned an eternity with God based on His works.

Jesus became both the source and the ends of good works in humanity.

Jesus became the only measure of merit within a human heart for entrance into an eternity with God.

Jesus’ alteration of the system introduced the Gulf- between human merit and entrance to heaven.

For the Christian then, good is ultimately the work God does in and through a person as Christ lives in and through him.

It will be interesting to see where “The Good Place” goes with its ideas about good and entering the afterlife. My sense is that the Gulf will escape address, but I hope it is given a little air time as well.

I figure it won’t though, because that means you have to throw out the whole points pursuit project that makes up the current push of the program.

That’s okay.

At least Schur’s show is asking the right questions: What is heaven? How does one get there, if it exists? What is good?

Maybe it will help more people to look for deeper, better, more heartfelt answers.

Truths.