Ethics 9: Good Or God? (John Bevere)

Note: For new readers, welcome! I greatly recommend you start back at the beginning of this series so that this makes sense. Just go to the search bar and type in "ethics" and all the ethics articles will pop up.

DISCLAIMER: I do not take ANY credit WHATSOEVER for the ideas presented in this article!!! All credit goes to the author and pastor (I think) John Bevere. I recently read one of his books Good or God? and it packs such a powerful lesson, I thought I would present it to you in a much more simplified way. It also relates to ethics because it...well you'll see.

(P.S. so sorry this is out late, I've been preparing a series on my composition blog due to recent discoveries/works completed/techniques)

So in this day and age, the word "good" is overused.

"This salad is good!"
                                                                            "You are good at basketball!"
                  "That movie was good!"
                                                                                                                       "God is good!"
                                                         "Goodness gracious!"

I'm not saying that it's wrong to use the word "good." The point is that we cannot say that if something is "good" it necessarily is good.

Hooray, a deep phrase that doesn't make sense! Well, notice my usage of quotation marks. When I refer to quote-unquote "good" I am referring to the word alone. When I refer to good, however I am referring to morality.

If this is confusing, then I will borrow one of Bevere's excellent explanations to demonstrate the difference:

Adam and Eve were the first people. The story of the Fall can be found in Genesis 3. Satan appeared as a serpent to Eve and questioned God's command to Adam and Eve to not eat from the tree of Good and Evil. This next part is what I'd like to highlight:

"The woman saw that the tree’s fruit was good to eat and pleasing to look at. She also saw that it would make a person wise. So she took some of the fruit and ate it."

Now I'll highlight some important details. See if you can catch on.

"The woman saw that the tree’s fruit was good to eat and pleasing to look at. She also saw that it would make a person wise. So she took some of the fruit and ate it."

Just because the fruit was "good" to eat and it was "good" (pleasing to the eye) and also the "good" attribute of wisdom could be attained from eating it, it was against God's command.

So watch out! Be careful. Don't live a life of fear, but definitely don't underlook things. You might ask yourself: "But how would I know? What am I supposed to do about this?"

Simple. Ask yourself this:

"Is what I'm doing out of obedience to God or is it for my own good?"

Well, somebody asked me once if he should give a large portion of money to charity. After all, giving to charity is a good thing to do (because it is) and it seemed reasonable that God would wish it (He does). So to reduce any obscurity/vagueness, instead ask yourself this:

"Am I trying to amplify God here or myself?" OR "What is the real reason I'm doing ____?"

Thanks for reading, and I'll see you next time (hopefully on time!)
~Caleb