All I'm saying is, there's nothing new. I mean, there's right and there's wrong and it pretty much just is what it is. There's no new morality. There's nothing more right or more just than what was right or just 6,000 years ago.

 

And that's exactly why, when someone tells us to think of a good person, we might think of Gandhi or whatever, and then we might think of what they did in their lives, but then the very next thing we think is "Big deal!". Admit it. You thought it. So what? What did they ever do that was so great?

 

And you were right. None of those folks did anything that anyone else couldn't have done. So why didn't anyone else do those things? Because, we're idiots.

 

Think about it this way. When you go to school, you learn your ABC's, which is really great. And then you learn words, and then sentences. You learn to count, then addition, then calculus and whatever. Pretty soon we're building gigantic computers and going to the moon. This is how we learn and progress.

 

But when we go to Sunday School, we learn the Ten Commandments, that it's wrong to lie and steal and screw around, and after that everything else we learn can just be boiled down to the lesson that it's good to do right and it's bad to do wrong. And maybe the reason there's nothing new for us to learn is because we still haven't got that one down yet. What I mean is, maybe God hasn't taught is calculus yet because we still can't count to ten.

 

So, say somebody tells you that Mother Theresa was good. You might think, ok, she fed lots of people and helped the poor. But if someone says God is good, you think

 

People want everything. They want total freedom to do whatever they want, and no responsibility. I mean, what if God said, ok, no more suffering in the world, but ya'll will have to obey the Ten Commandments all the time, forever. First of all, folks would probably say "Forget it!" And even if they didn't, they wouldn't be able to keep all the commandments anyway, so it wouldn't matter.

 

In a way, this kind of is what God promises. And, in a way, this is kind of what people say to Him.

 

People who complain about suffering in the world are like kids who can't keep their rooms clean and then complain about the dirt.

 

Anyway, what we think of as "good people" aren't good in the same way that "bad people" are bad. Good people are usually good just for its own sake, or to help others, or to serve a higher purpose. Hardly anyone ever does wrong just for the sake of doing wrong, or to serve any purpose but themselves.

 

Think of it this way: you remember the Super Friends and the Legion of Doom? The Super Friends were super so that they could make the world a better place or whatever. But the Legion of Doom wasn't evil just to make the world worse. They didn't care about the world at all: They just wanted money, power, sex (I assume), and revenge against their enemies.

 

Another reason folks don't want to hear how good God is, is because they don't think much at all anymore about what good is. They don't think that good is perfection and that bad is anything less than that. In fact, they do just the opposite: They think of the absolute worst person they can, and say "I'm not as bad as that guy." It's like there's no "good" and "bad"; there's "bad" and "worse" and "not as bad as that".

 

And there's one more really big reason that we don't want to know how good God is. It's because we don't want to know how bad we are. It's not hard to understand, even though most folks don't undrstand it.

 

So here it is.

 

Everybody's bad.

 

Everybody lies, everybody cheats, everybody wants things they shouldn't want and does things they know are wrong. So the lesson isn't that I'm just as good as Billy Graham; it's that I'm just as guilty as Ted Bundy. Just look at some of the "good people" in the Bible: The Apostle Paul persecuted and killed Christians, King David killed a man so he could have his wife. All those folks were just as rotten and foul as Judas or that Pharoah fellow. In fact, there's only two people that the Bible didn't record any dirt on, and one was Jesus and the other was Daniel. And Daniel did wrong, too, I just reckon it wasn't all that interesting.

 

It's like when you have kids. You don't do everything for them and give them whatever they want. Maybe at first you do, but eventually you do less and less or they'll never learn to do things for themselves. The alternative is to have mindless robots.

 

OK, have you ever seen a parent of a kid who is a junky? And the parent gives the kid money every few weeks and the kid promises to do better but in a day or two disappears again with half the silverware and $6000.00 in bearer bonds? And the junky kid blames everyone else and the parents wonder where they went wrong. See, we're all like that junky who can never get straight. That's how our whole lives are.

 

I think anyone would like to be closer to God, if they didn't think that that meant being dead. Who wouldn't? Of course it does mean that you're going to have to stop cussing, and lying, and kicking that dog through the hedge. And a lot of other folks are going to hate you who might otherwise not. Folks don't want to do that. They want to hear that everything's ok, you're cool, you're doing fine; not that you're a sinner and the way you live your life isn't going to bring you any closer yo God.

 

We don't think of God as being like a father who tells us not to lie or steal and then whups our ass when we do it so that we learn not to lie or steal. We think of Him as being like a Grandpa who tells us not to lie or steal and then winks and tells us its ok and gives us a piece of candy if we do. And how bad is it, that God is good and we're all bad and always were and never get any better? Well, the Bible says it's even worse than that: It says that all have sinned and come short of God's glory, and that the best we could offer Him is as filthy rags.

 

That really sucks.