Processed Goodness (and all my subjective crap)

I remember trying to process 'goodness' as a teenager. Trying to define what it meant to be a good person and if I really wanted to be a good, kind, upright son and citizen.

I remember wrestling internally with those parts of me that wanted so desperately not to care about what good and evil meant. I remember wanting to be free to do as I pleased regardless the consequence, a subjective goodness I suppose. Yet I also recall wanting to be free from my careless selfish thoughts and actions. I fought internally to hold onto a definition of goodness as I understood it in my context without the knowledge of Christ.

'God's invisible qualities - his eternal power and divine nature - have been clearly seen...' - Paul noted this in Romans 1.

He goes on later to explain that the Law of God made sin apparent. The Law, in pointing out and defining some of the characteristics of God, His nature and His holy expectations, also pointed out sin and evil.

Even before I heard the Gospel story I was witness to it's power in all of creation (Romans 1). Having been made in God's image my spirit, my heart, soul and mind, longed for unity with a creator and yet also longed for selfish desires too, and were they different? The Law, by nature of God's presence in creation and obvious residue in all our aspects of American law, justice, love, peace, grace, truth, hurt, pain, equality, unity etc. - brought about a struggle within me that desired deeper connection with truth...while I was aware of truth thanks to Law and creation and culture, I wasn't yet able to define it.

'through Christ Jesus, the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death,' Paul goes on to say in Romans 8.

In being reconciled to my Creator, definable Truth brought about victory over my selfish desires, perfectly in an eternal sense and yet physically it remained in tension. The struggle has changed, I'm no longer confused about goodness and it's role in life, Truth demolishes absolute confusion (though maturing in Christ brings about clarity). Goodness is defined by Christ and victory comes physically, mentally, emotionally when I'm willingly obedient to Him, let me say again, eternally it never changes.

Wrestling with this stuff as a teen was crazy. Wrestling with this Truth as an adult in Christ is healthy. Truth is fact in Christ and conceptual in it's foundational principles in this culture. It illuminates and guides. It defines and causes one to question other 'truths.' It's universal and personal at the same time. Eternal and immediate, here and now.

Years later, I'm thankful that I can define goodness and sin. I am thankful I am not still foraging for definitions that sound, look and feel good in a particular moment in such an imperfect life. I'm free from the slavery of confusion and indecision and bound to unchanging truth.

'In the beginning was the Word...In him was life and that life was the light of men.' John 1:1,4

Wrestle with this stuff. Read John's story of Christ. See how the Spirit moved throughout the early church in Acts. Read Paul's letter to the Romans to wrestle alongside Paul with these concepts of goodness, evil, truth etc.