“What Makes A Hero: Good, Evil, and God”
What Makes A Hero? The Death-Defying Ministry of Jesus Christ
“Good, Evil, and God”
Matthew 7:15-20 (New Revised Standard Version)
“Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will know them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thorns, or figs from thistles? In the same way, every good tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus you will know them by their fruits.
The center of our faith revolves around doing all the good we can, with all the people we can, and in all the ways we can.
Deep inside, we always want good to win because that’s the side we desire to be on.
One characteristic of heroes is that they always know the difference between good and evil.
We link good to something that feels or produces a positive result or response.
Good can also mean how effective something is.
We often judge goodness according to the result it produces, but this is not the extent of good.
The work we do doesn’t make us good or evil, and neither do these works earn or lose us salvation.
The work we produce is a sign of our connection to God.
God is the definition of good.
If asking, what is good? then one must answer with, does it come from God?
Good is our word for God’s activity in this world.
Our first inclination is to credit, or blame, God with everything that happens in this world. Many also ascribe to the statement; God won’t give me more than I can handle.
The glaring issue with these is that it implies that God is the source of everything that happens to us.
Not everything we experience comes from God.
God created a masterful world with complex weather patterns that can cause storms.
God created a world where diseases exist.
God gave us the gift of free-will and some people use that to do evil.
Evil is nothingness.
It’s nothing in the sense that it creates a void, and it cannot stand on its own.
Evil is only seen when the light of good is blocked by the very presence of evil.
Goodness is rooted in the relationship between God and creation, and the link is Jesus Christ.
Jesus isn’t our happily ever after, Jesus is what makes a happily ever after with God possible.
God, through Christ, in the power of the Holy Spirit, reveals the truth that evil and death is simply an empty nothingness, and God is the good that transforms us and fills our nothingness with the redemption that we so desperately need.