Being Good: Christian Moral Life

I. Moral Frameworks, Worldviews, and 'Great Truths,' or, Seeing through the Fog

There is no shortage of moral philosophies or ethics.

Looking at their common features can simplify.
A helpful framework comes from Peter Kreeft's Back to Virtue.

Analyses of the human condition share a common structure:

Undesired effect, cause; desired effect, cause.
Symptoms, underlying problem (diagnosis);
solution (prognosis), means to the solution (prescription).
Their common structure suggests a deeper metaphysical reality.

Kreeft's scheme displays goodness as an end (goal or telos) or as a means to an end.

Moral visions cluster in regarding goodness as a means, an end, or both:

II. Goodness Gets Desired Results
Here goodness is the means to getting what we want.
Our objectives are external to our efforts.
Examples: Paganism pleases the gods/powers; the 'good' son, the dishonest steward.
Behaviorism focuses on responses to incentives and disincentives.
Frustrations: The powers might not deliver. We remain subordinate. We can lack moral integrity.
Shortcuts: Other means get results: hypocrisy, Machiavellianism, etc. Is pleasing really being good?

III. Goodness Results from Our Work
Goodness names what we want, not how we get it.
The means, not the goal, is external to goodness.
Examples: Consequentialism, magic (Simon), gnosticism, technocracy (Solomon).
Prosperity through markets; Marxian 'social justice'; fascist or technocratic efficiency.
We master powers/processes to bring about desired conditions.
Frustrations: Techniques don't deliver; experts may be incompetent.
The law of unintended consequences. Joseph empowering Pharaoh.
Power and achievements distort us (labor saving devices).
Shortcuts: Means that contradict our ends leave us empty and enslaved. 1 Samuel 8 on Israel getting a king.
Settling for less: corruption (Animal Farm), sacrifices of valuable goods for trifles.

IV. Goodness Merits Reward
Goodness is associated with both end and means;

both are internal to it, so justice and moral integrity.

Examples: Karma, honor ethics, moralism/legalism. Jesus (Matt 10:42) and Paul (1 Cor 3) on rewards. Guilt as well as shame.
Frustrations: The wicked prosper (Eccl 9:11-12).
Entitlement, resentment when justice isn't served: Jesus' parable of the laborers (Matt 20), cognitive dissonance at our own faults.
Shortcuts: Buddhist enlightenment. Unmerited mercy/grace (the prayer of the publican, Luke 18:9-14).

V. Goodness Returns to Its Source
Goodness is a kind of agent whose work is determinative.
Examples: Platonism, Christian Platonism, mysticism, Sufism, Dante's Divine Comedy.
Being good is tapping into being (2 Peter's 'theosis').
Frustrations: Otherworldliness. Disdain for 'inferior' creation. Disengagement.

Passivity, sacramental complacency.

Shortcuts: universalism: everything returns, without exception.

VI. Goodness Spreads Further Goodness
Example: Aristotle's ethics. Truth/goodness/beauty are transcendentals, properties of being to be cultivated so we fulfill our potential. Excellence (virtue) breeds excellence.
Compared to Platonism, this stresses human agency and initiative, leadership (Moses, David, Solomon, etc.).
(This becomes a major feature of Christian ethics, worth treating in depth later.)
Frustrations: This easily degenerates into perfectionism and legalism, or Pharisaism. Virtuous people are rare.
Shortcuts: Elitism settles for a virtuous few in charge of the many.
Modernity can make virtue less important.

VII. Goodness Expresses Itself
This comes in two influential forms: essentialism, and non- or anti-essentialism.
1. Essentialist examples: Confucianism.

Human beings have four good beginnings to enlarge and fulfill, like a spring finding an outlet. (Cf. Aristotle's tensions between competing and potentially vicious human qualities.)
Song of Songs' celebration of natural human attraction, recalling Genesis 1-2.
Also traditionalism: forms of life self-validate because their functionality is wisdom.
Frustrations: Virtue is more elusive. Traditionalism can become stale and uncreative, and virtue-cultivation formulaic and unimaginative. Disappointments can shatter people when formulas don't yield expected results, or crises disrupt, or disabilities prevent enlargement.
The Freudian hybrid psyche identifies tensions like Aristotle's (id, not just superego).
Shortcuts: Cultures of outward conformity ("whitewashed tombs"), materialism (indulgence).

2. Non-essentialist example: existentialism (Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Sartre).

Existence precedes essence, so goodness is freeing oneself from 'inauthentic' social constraints and living one's own 'authentic' existence.
Ethical expressivism and emotivism develop from this.
Existentialism values internal consistency versus external conformity (rules, constructed 'essence' etc.).
Manifestations include the myth of innocent youth, sentimentalist 'noble savage', self-disciplining market or demos.
Biblical examples of 'catharsis' (venting): Psalm 88, Job.
Frustrations: We're broken and boring; our expressions don't truly satisfy. Ecclesiastes fingers the pointlessness of expressions. Anarchy/chaos is parasitic on the order it resists.
Perceptions are unavoidable, and nonconformism becomes conformist.
The Freudian hybrid psyche points out the incoherent tension of sheer existence.
Shortcuts: Diversion, PIMO (truthful only to self), identity/masking, posing as authentic, mere impulsivity. Nihilism and its 'culture of death.' Indulgence, idolatry, out of exhaustion or a sense of greater things outside the self.

Common Categories to return to:
All of these make something ultimate, and something practically ultimate: results, process, justice, being, excellence, essence, or existence. And whatever is ultimate shapes our priorities accordingly.
Biblical examples point in multiple directions rather than consistently in favor of one vision.

Exit questions to ponder:

Where do you see these ethical visions and logics around you?
And in you?
What are your reasons and motivations for being good, and/or wanting to be?
How well do these line up with one or more of these common visions?
Is one of them dominant in you, or in your society?

VIII. Goodness Is 'Something Greater'
Old Testament Israel's life (and God's Word to it) displays shades of each of these,

but not very successfully.
What could God be up to?

Aspects of Jesus' approach align with each of these perspectives too, but imperfectly.

People judge Jesus from all of them,
and God vindicates Jesus over us,
yet all play roles in New Testament ethics.

goodness	Old Testament	New Testament
gets	Moses' covenant rewards good behavior.	"If the work ... built on the foundation survives, he [or she] will receive a reward."
results	Covenant rewards are blessings of 'the good life.'	A sacrificer shall "receive many times more ... and in the age to come, eternal life."
merits	Proverbs associate wisdom, goodness, and just outcomes.	"As you sow, so shall you reap."
returns	Israel will return to God's goodness.	"I will draw all to myself."
spreads	Torah, justice, and blessing will stream from Zion.	The church is "to be a royal priesthood."
expresses	Israel is God's betrothed.	"Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks."

Are they incomplete? Or aspects of something greater?

My strategy: start with Israel and Jesus and work back.

This may confront our presuppositions and motives for being good,
since we're starting with God rather than our philosophies' cultural instincts.

IX. What Is Goodness?
Dictionary definitions and synonyms:

Desirability, approval, suitability for a role, pleasure, satisfaction, advantage, benefit.
Righteousness, justice, virtue, perfections.

So goodness tends to center on purpose and being.
Jesus names (and frames) goodness as a Who, not a what (Matthew 19:16-21):

"Behold, one approached him, saying, 'Teacher, what good would I do to have eternal life?' He said to him, 'For what reason are you asking me about the good?
One there is who is good. ... Come here, follow me.'"
Jesus associates goodness, God, ends, and means with "the Kingdom of God" (Matthew 19:23-24).

Exit question: How does your notion of goodness align with goodness according to Jesus?

X. The Good News of Goodness

"The Kingdom of God" is

A 'new arrangement' to enter (Acts 1:3, 14:22),
a new politics or order of holy relationships (Matt 10:7-8, Rom 14:17)
invading old creation’s resistant 'world' (Luke 11:20),
fulfilling God's earlier promises (Luke 1:54-55),
whose absolute priority is the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, in life under their new covenant,
maintained by grace and personal responsibility (Rom 14:17-19),
personified by Jesus the King (Luke 11:20, 2 Tim 4:1, 18),
proclaimed in apostolic mission (Acts 28:31, Col 4:11),
operating in a transformed but still-apocalyptic context (1 Thess 5:1-12),
represented and inherited by his maturing subjects (1 Cor 4:19-20, 6:9-11, Eph 5:5, 2 Thess 1:5),
enlivened and raised by his Holy Spirit (Matt 12:28, Gal 5:18-23),
characterized, willed by, and for his Father (Matt 7:21, 1 Cor 15:24),
to include new creation in their eternal fellowship (1 Thess 2:12).

Not just some future and faraway state, 'Kingdom of Heaven' notwithstanding!

XI. Goodness' Epic Kingdom History
The Kingdom's history involves

creation: the 'very good' start of being-from-God.
rebellion: 'the fall' of 'the world' into helpless alienation and depravity.
anticipation: patriarchal promises and protections.
preparation: Israel's purpose, frustrated being, and accumulating insights.
inauguration: Jesus' birth and baptism.
invasion: Jesus' ministry, whose acts are 'signs.'
invitation: proclamation of the gospel of its approach.
migration: sinners' trusting response, justification, and discipleship.
exaltation: Jesus' passion, resurrection, ascension, session (goodness merits).
formation: sanctification (reforming, transforming) in church fellowship (goodness results).
mission: further invasions, tribulations, migrations (goodness spreads).
glorification: Jesus' final parousia or 'appearing' (goodness returns).
compensation: judgment, Kingdom inheritance and disinheritance (goodness gets).
consummation: eternal life of lasting love, presence, service, and blessing (goodness expresses).

The church is

a primary present sign of the Kingdom's reality,
enjoying, naming, exploring, and pursuing it.

This is goodness' true (though obscure) framework (Luke 11:20-32).