Good­ness (Greek, agath­o­sune; Antonym: moral or eth­i­cal evil)

Good­ness is a hard word to get your arms around; it is a neb­u­lous word and can mean many things. Benev­o­lent, gra­cious, humane—these might words when one thinks of the word ‘good.’ What images come to your mind if some­one were to say, “She did a good thing?” What did you pic­ture this per­son doing? Did she hold the door open for some­one? Did she anony­mously send some­one a card with a hun­dred dol­lars? Did she visit some­one at the hos­pi­tal who had fail­ing health? Again, if you were to pour over a the­saurus and look at the syn­onyms for the word good, did she do an admirable thing? A valu­able thing? An hon­or­able thing? And what exactly would that be? As you can see from a lan­guage stand­point, the Eng­lish word for good is a strange and vague word. How­ever, when the Bible uses the word, it has a very dis­tinct mean­ing and uses it in a way that is very decided in what it means.

To begin, agath­o­sune, the Greek word for good­ness, is a unique word that is found only in bib­li­cal writ­ings. On the one hand, it is char­ac­ter­ized as an active good­ness; it is when I proac­tively do some­thing ‘good’ for some­one. Specif­i­cally, you can think of the word gen­er­ous. But as we spoke about ear­lier, isn’t this just kind­ness? What then might be the dif­fer­ence between good­ness and kind­ness? Aren’t they the same thing?  Here is the unique aspect of the bib­li­cal word agath­o­sune: it is being gen­er­ous with some­one in some way, but also at the same time, offer­ing spir­i­tual help or guid­ance to them. This is the key dif­fer­ence between good­ness and kindness.

When you are ‘good’ you help some­one in some tan­gi­ble way, but at the same time, you also offer the per­son some form of spir­i­tual guid­ance through the sit­u­a­tion. This could be an encour­age­ment or a chal­lenge in some way. Let me give you an exam­ple of both kind­ness and good­ness. When I show some­one kind­ness, I help them in some tan­gi­ble way, per­haps I assist them in repair­ing their deck which has seen year of neglect. In doing this, we worked together and I helped them. That’s chrestotes—that’s kindness—nothing more, noth­ing less. If I were to show this same per­son good­ness, I would help them with their deck, but then I would also help them in a tan­gi­ble and spir­i­tual way. Per­haps as we took a break over a cup of cof­fee I would ask them how they were doing and while we were talk­ing, they shared a strug­gle they were hav­ing. This would be an oppor­tu­nity I might have to offer some bib­li­cal into their sit­u­a­tion. I might share a pas­sage from the book of Proverbs or a good book that I recently read that might help them in the prob­lem they are fac­ing. This is an exam­ple of agath­o­sune or goodness—spiritual care cou­pled with prac­ti­cal help.

The chal­lenge with being a ‘good’ per­son is that it requires you to enter into someone’s life and offer direc­tion. This some­times might require a dif­fi­cult con­ver­sa­tion. What I have found with oth­ers is that they are really bad at doing this or too good in doing this. What do I mean by that? First, you can have one per­son who does not like to enter tough sit­u­a­tions at all, and they avoid them at all cost. They know in their heart they need to bring up some­thing with their spouse or a good friend, but to do so would mean calamity, chaos and hurt feel­ings and they don’t want to do that. On the other hand, you can have some­one who is too good at hav­ing hard con­ver­sa­tions and they do so at a moment’s notice and with a lot of calamity, chaos and hurt feel­ings! When a per­son like this goes into a con­ver­sa­tion, they are usu­ally not patient or gen­tle, and the words they share are hurtful.

To offer some­one any form of advice or spir­i­tual coun­sel requires three key ingre­di­ents: 1) you must be hum­ble and you can­not talk down to the per­son; 2) you can only take the per­son as far as you have gone your­self in terms of life expe­ri­ence; and 3) you have to know how to gen­uinely lis­ten. With regard to that last one, I have seen that some peo­ple when they are offer­ing advice to some­one jump in too soon and give the per­son their obser­va­tions too soon. What some­times works best is that instead of always offer­ing answers to some­one is to first ask them ques­tions and allow the per­son to come up with solu­tions for them­selves. So do you think your son is going to respond well to you if you share that with him? From the stand­point of the Bible, what kind of answers do you think it offers for what you are fac­ing? That is a dif­fi­cult spot your boss has put you in—what kind of deci­sion do you think you should make in this instance? Empow­er­ing people—this is how Jesus often taught others—he often put the respon­si­bil­ity on them and asked them to find the right answer. This then can be another form of goodness.

Ques­tions you can ask your­self: how good are you with oth­ers, doing some­thing kind, but in the same breath, gen­tly chal­leng­ing them where they asked for help?  To grow in good­ness, we need to step into uncom­fort­able sit­u­a­tions some­times; often this requires us to sac­ri­fice our­selves in some way for some­one (e.g., our time, money, etc.), but also to move into another person’s life and offer spir­i­tual care. How good are you at that? In terms of your abil­ity in con­fronting oth­ers, do you need to shed your fears and become more resolved in speak­ing with oth­ers or do you need to be more hum­ble and gen­tle when offer­ing advice or coun­sel? In this area, are you typ­i­cally too timid or are you too harsh? What do you need to change in your life to become a ‘good’ person?