“No good tree bears bad fruit, nor does a bad tree bear good fruit. Each tree is recognized by its own fruit. People do not pick figs from thornbushes, or grapes from briers. A good man brings good things out of the good stored up in his heart, and an evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in his heart. For the mouth speaks what the heart is full of.” (Luke 6:43-45)
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As we continue our look at the reality of both good and evil around us (and, admittedly, sometimes even doing battle within us) I’ve taken some time to discuss the fact that our natures are a combination of both. In our original design by God, we were created for good; in many of the choices we make we choose that which is closer to evil. Both goodness and sin, in other words, are simply a part of who we are. To deny our innate goodness is to fall into the trap of either false modesty or self-hatred; to deny our innate sinfulness is to fall into the trap of either self-aggrandizement or false pride. I think it’s better to avoid both traps! If we take this concept seriously - that there are elements within each of us that can choose either good or evil at any given moment then the question becomes how we allow goodness to flourish from us and sinfulness to decline within us, and that’s essentially what I want to talk about today. It isn't just a matter of making a choice - because I suspect (I hope) that all of would would make goodness our choice. But beyond making the choice, the challenge is living the choice in a world where the temptation to choose the other way is very strong, indeed - and sometimes those temptations (sometimes small, sometimes gigantic) seem all around us. Making a choice is easy; living the choice is hard work. Sometimes it can seem like a lost cause - and sometimes (probably more often than we would like) it’s Christians and the church that make it seem like a lost cause!
Far too often over the centuries the church has drummed into our heads the fact that we’re sinful creatures. That’s why, when I started speaking on this theme I started by discussing goodness - the goodness of God, and then our own innate goodness with which humanity was created. Goodness is an integral part of who and what we are. So we have no reason to be overwhelmed by evil or sin. We have, indeed, the potential to overcome evil or sin - with a little help and guidance from God along the way. But sometimes we get stuck, and I wonder if the reason we get stuck is not because we misunderstand a term that’s entered Christian lingo (one that goes all the way back to Augustine in the 4th) - and that’s the idea of humanity being “totally depraved.” Martin Luther said it; John Calvin said it. It still gets thrown around today, and I suspect it turns a lot of people away because we interpret it through a modern, colloquial filter. To say that something is “depraved” today means that it’s horribly evil, or morally sick or ethically bankrupt. But those things are just extreme examples of what totally depravity can do to us. Really, the phrase means that we’re totally helpless or totally dependent. To say that humanity is totally depraved is to say that we are completely dependent on God to bring forth both salvation within us and goodness from us. In other words, both salvation and goodness are the result of the Holy Spirit working within us and transforming us. The presence of the Holy Spirit assures us that we do not face a hopeless battle!
I find myself quite taken with the Psalms on this point, which assure us over and over again that thanks to God we can in fact choose goodness in ever greater abundance in our lives! Psalm 34:14 tells us to “Turn from evil and do good; seek peace and pursue it.” Psalm 37:3 tells us to “trust in the Lord and do good,” and then later on in v.27 it tells us once again to “turn from evil and do good.” The point, to me, is that even if we’re totally depraved in the sense of being totally helpless and totally dependent on God, we nevertheless have it within ourselves to choose goodness no matter how much evil might seem to tempt us, and the end result of the choice is that we not only choose good or evil, we choose the kind of life we have. Jesus said, “seek and you will find.” Now, that’s a little out of context, I admit. He wasn’t talking about “goodness” and “evil” - but the principle works. You generally find what it is that you’re looking for. I’ve heard it said that when you buy a new car you’re suddenly amazed as you drive around in it at how many other people drive the same kind of car. It’s not that your purchase set a trend; it’s just that now that you’ve made the purchase you’re more inclined to see the car that you purchased. In the same way if you commit yourself to goodness (both showing it yourself and finding it in others) you find it. If you look for the worst, you’ll probably find it as well. And so often people choose the latter. A person does all sorts of good things, but they screw up once and that’s all we focus on and we never let it go. It’s also why forgiveness is so important to a Christian life, but that’s another story for another day. The point is that we see what we look for and what we expect to find. Proverbs 11:27 puts it this way: “He who seeks good finds goodwill, but evil comes to him who searches for it.”
So if we want goodness in ever increasing abundance to be the mark of our lives, then we have to seek it out and sometimes we have to seek it within - which is where the Holy Spirit dwells: within us, touching us, moving us to deeper faith, calling us to greater love, encouraging us to works we never dreamed possible. And as we seek goodness, we eventually find it. “A good man brings good things out of the good stored up in his heart,” said Jesus. It is stored in our heart - in the very depths of our being - because this is where the Holy Spirit dwells within each of us; because we are made in the image of God. As we search our hearts, and as we search for God, we find that godlike goodness within, and we bring it forth in ever increasing abundance, touching the lives of those around us. That’s what happens if we seek good.
Unfortunately, we don’t always seek good. There are those who seek something other than good. There are those who possess what you might call a critical spirit, who see the worst in everything and everyone and fixate on that worst. No one gets the benefit of the doubt; everyone is a suspect of some sort. There are those who are indeed depraved to the point at which they seek only their own well-being and their own pleasure and to fulfil their own desires at the expense of others, not matter how many get hurt as they do so: “ … an evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in his heart.”
I suppose all of us to some extent fall into that trap. We’re all selfish at times. Sometimes we look to ourselves more than other. But essentially, if we have the reservoir of goodness with us that I spoke of a couple of weeks ago, then I believe that if we seek it out and tap into it, it ultimately reaps goodness from our lives and back into our lives. That’s why our faith calls us to be guided by God’s Spirit in our daily lives. When we allow that to happen, the Spirit leads us to goodness in abundance, even if we are “totally depraved” - which is to say, totally helpless and totally dependent on God.
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