There’s An APP for That! - Part 5

God has APPS available for each of us to download in our hearts.

One exciting APP is GOODNESS!   Goodness: the state or quality of being good, especially morally good or beneficial. In a sense, it's the quality of having quality.  Other words in the word-field of goodness: beneficial, gainful, useful, helpful, profitable, and excellent.  Moral "goodness" is grouped with words such as uprightness, virtue, benevolence, worth, value, generosity.

What is Goodness?

You see goodness when someone is consistently seeking your good or those of another ahead of their own. Goodness is not just a matter of being good or doing good or being taught goodness -- the teaching feeds the doing, the doing feeds the being, the being enables us to grasp the teaching, which feeds into more doing and being. Jump in at any point to start the cycle.

Jesus spoke a lot about false goodness, about how many leaders of the faith are putting on Oscar-worthy performances of their own goodness in front of an audience of God or their community. God's not impressed. And "fake it 'til you make it" doesn't make it before God. Mark Twain once wrote that it is "very wearying to be good". It takes work to be consistently good, because it's so thoroughly against our natural inclinations.

The root of all goodness is the goodness of God. Sounds simple, right? But there is a problem with what we think of as 'good'. We think, "If God is good, He'll do good things for us!" And what do we think of as good? We define it as acquiring material wealth, having things go our own way, instant healing of our ills, and the removal of suffering.  But God’s goodness may include humility, suffering, loss, service, and maybe even boredom.  The things we think of as the gifts of a good God may well be the most important things for us not to have. God's goodness is defined by God's love. God's goodness is goodness; it is our expectations that must change in its light.

Goodness has a way of setting things straight. When we see other people being good or doing well, it often reminds us of how short we fall.  The exposé can be quite a shock, puncturing our self-image.  Even when we do good, goodness may have nothing to do with it. While nothing entirely gets rid of this tendency in our lives, God has given us a way to face up to it: through confession.  This not only opens us for God's response to our un-goodness, it also brings about a more truthful self-image. The only way to increase our goodness is to know what ways we're flawed so we can replace that with goodness.

Well, what are you waiting for, do something for goodness' sake!