No One Is All Good Nor All Bad

I was thinking about my mother this morning. On the one hand, she can be bitter and mean. Uptight and abrupt. She holds grudges against people who have been dead for decades. Yet when we go visit my brother in prison, she'll slip off and visit with her "other sons", a couple of inmate workers who don't have visitors. She'll go over and sit down at their station where they serve coffee and popcorn so they can visit. She asks them questions about this and that, not so much because she is nosy but because she wants to connect with them.

Her humor is biting and sometimes it's not fully in jest. Yes, she can act like a total a bitch but then turn around and cry when she hears a friend has lost a loved one in a car accident. She even remembers my best friend's birthday from when he and I were in Mrs. Garrison's class in Hugh Goodwin Elementary, not to mention all of her own elementary school friends. She's not all good nor all bad.

I saw this even more pronounced in my grandmother. Yep, Mother's mother. We called her Mom. As much as I loved her, Mom was a controlling, uptight woman who could worry the bark off a tree. Look up the word "nag" in Webster's Dictionary and it has her picture! Yet I was the recipient of her love more times than I can count. When Dad ran away from home at the age of 42, Mom kept us afloat as Mother was starting a new career as a single mom. She wasn't all good nor all bad.

I think about my father, too. Yes, he really did run away from home. He left us high and dry. No financial support. Walked away from all of his responsibilities. After he moved to Houston, he lived with a woman who (in my rather jaded opinion) needed to go to elocution lessons just to rise 'white trash' status, all while he was still married to Mother. Dad used to say that when he left El Dorado in '74, he was "financially, emotionally, spiritually, morally and physically bankrupt." Yet, he still cared. In the years that followed, Dad worked on his bankrupt condition. He worked on it hard. And even though he never wanted to be married again to Mother, he still cared for her. He even offered to anonymously pay for her to go to the doctor when she couldn't afford insurance. He wasn't all good, nor all bad.

Through the years, I've known some pretty bad people. Drug dealers, addicts, drunks, adulterers, cheats and generally folks with some pretty major moral flaws. Yet, as I've gotten to know them on a heart level, I've without fail found a compassionate side to them. They may have been mean in one way but they were tender in others. I'm reminded of when I was driving trucks for a drilling company during a semester away from college back in the '70s. One time I was sent to Utah with a driller who had a reputation for drinking and then fighting. That was just part of his routine. Drink... then fight. Tomorrow night, drink... then fight. Repeat as necessary.

I was literally fearing for my safety when we had to share a motel room in Farmington, New Mexico, on our drive out west. Yet when we got settled in from a long day driving big trucks across the desert, what did he do first? He called his wife, a lady he married when she was just 13 years old! Before long, I overheard him tell his wife to tell one son that he was proud of him for dong something good at school or on the baseball team or something. "And tell him I love him. And I love you, too." He paused while she apparently replied. "I love you!" She replied again. "I love you, too!" The volley of I love you's continued for a while. Eventually, I headed out the door for an errand while they were still saying "I love you" to each other. Rough and tumble but deeply in love with his wife. He wasn't all bad nor all good.

On the other hand, how many "good" people do we know who have fallen to some "bad" sin? The list of TV preachers caught getting a little action on the side (with male or female hookers) is long. Drugs have taken down a lot of them, too. One of my all-time favorite pastors fell to adultery, breaking apart not one but two homes. I know of one Baptist preacher who was also a bootlegger and at one time smuggled illegal aliens from Mexico... all while filling a pulpit on Sunday morning! Go figure.

I believe none of us is either all good nor all bad. My ex-wife didn't agree. In her world, you were one or the other. And once you were deemed "bad", you could not recover your "good" status. And my temper secured for me a place on the "bad" list- banished from the "good" list forever. What she didn't know is that I had been working on my temper long before I ever met her. I saw it as a character flaw and was actively taking it to God for healing. But, I was still a work in progress.

After she kicked me to the curb almost a decade ago, I continued to work on my temper. I'm sad to say, remnants of the "old Todd" still linger. I'm still a work in progress. But I think she'd be pretty amazed at how much I've grown in this area. Stuff still gets under my skin. And yes, I still blow up sometime. Rarely, but sometime. When I do, I am immediately reminded of Galatians 5:19: "Now the deeds of the flesh are evident, which are:... outbursts of anger..." Busted!

I read that and I come face to face with the fact that I'm not yet completely in His control. As much as I want to do the right thing, it is still a bit fleeting. Nope, I'm not there yet. But I'm not giving up.

While we're looking at Galatians, let's take a peek at the full list of what one version of the Bible called the "evidence of the flesh". By that, I take it as evidence that we are being controlled by our own fleshly (selfish, not of God) desires. "Now the deeds of the flesh are evident, which are: immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, disputes, dissensions, factions, envying, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these, of which I forewarn you, just as I have forewarned you, that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God."

Whoa! I didn't see any of the biggie sins listed in there! No drugs, stealing or driving over the speed limit! I guess adultery is covered in immorality, impurity and sensuality...  a sin trifecta of sorts. What I do see are a lot of things I also see in the average church member. They seem to be more about internal attitudes and decisions we make throughout each day.

I believe God created in each of us the capacity to do good and the capacity to do evil. And He gave us the free will to choose for ourselves. In addition, I believe we who have come to trust Jesus as our Savior now have the Holy Spirit living inside our hearts. As we trust Him not only as Savior (for eternity) but also as Lord (for the here and now) we also have the Holy Spirit working inside, calling us toward doing more and more good and by default, less evil. To me, it's more about doing His stuff with the natural byproduct of doing less evil stuff. Then again, I'm more grace focused than sin focused. If I walk toward Him, my back is naturally turned against evil stuff, things that would separate me from my Father.

Still, it's a struggle. It always will be. We will always be a mix of good and bad.
It's like being on a big field with homes on opposite ends. One is all good and one is all evil. Which one are we walking toward? Which one have we set as our goal? Better yet, it's like two houses next door to each other, separated by a fence. We tend to want to play in both yards, jumping back and forth over the fence.

Sadly, I see a lot of folks who give up trying. They find it is easier to just live one one side or to perpetually ride that fence. There's a definite element of safety in continuing to do what we know, the stuff we're comfortable doing already. But I love God! I really love Him! And the more I get to know and love Him, the less I want to even get close to that fence. I choose to turn my back on the fence that represents a compromised life at best, and a rebellious life at worst. I choose to walk toward His house where I'll enjoy fellowship with Him.

The good news is we have God living inside us. He sees our desires and pours out grace to keep moving toward God's house. Sure, we sometimes stumble and hop back across the fence but hopefully those times are less and less frequent as we are moving toward Him.

By the way, the world has probably painted for us a picture of God's house as being drab and boring filled with rules and stuff we can't touch. That's a lie. The only true joy in life is only found in His house. Jesus promised us that "living water" would flow from our bellies, overflowing joy. That also means fun and peace and a whole list of good things. Plus fewer and fewer of the things listed in Galatians 5:19 - 21.

None of us is all good nor all bad. We are all facing the same question every minute of every day: which way are we pointed? Are we growing toward the good or sliding by gravity toward the bad? Thanks to the Holy Spirit, I don't have to face that challenge alone.