The Problem Of Good

by Scott Kauffmann

I hope I would do better today, because the intertwined stories of inner-ring and outer-ring redemption are more profound and compelling than when they are separated. We can affirm the “good” an unbeliever experiences as real good, not an illusion – and can say with confidence that this good comes from God. Properly balanced, this view points toward our need for saving grace, not away from it.

COMMON GRACE IN CULTURAL ENGAGEMENT

How does common grace inform the way we approach our culture?

You can truly love culture for its own sake.
If you’re operating from common grace, you can love and appreciate something non-Christian for its own sake. You can appreciate (or make) great art whether or not it was made by, for, or about Christians. You can work for your community or justice or healing because these things reflect God’s shalom. You can be committed without reservation to a job outside professional ministry because you won’t be trapped in the myth of the “secular/sacred divide.”

Without common grace, you may be able to assault the culture with the truth of the Gospel – but you won’t be able to create or cultivate culture, which are the only ways to change it. ¹⁷

My friends Josh Jackson and Nick Purdy started a little company several years ago to celebrate “signs of life in music, film, and culture.” It’s now known as Paste Magazine, one of the finest cultural products out there, Christian or otherwise. They set out to spotlight the good, the true, and the beautiful, whatever its source, for whoever was interested. Apart from a few notable lapses in judgment (they carried my last record in their online store, for example), they’ve proven two things: that there is a near-inexhaustible supply of the good, the true, and the beautiful in popular culture; and that hundreds of thousands of non-Christians care about it. The magazine is rolling in secular awards, and you know why? It’s because they actually love the culture they are celebrating. They don’t think of it as a mission field. They really love it for its own sake. If they didn’t, only the Christians would read the magazine and give them awards.

Common grace gives sound Biblical roots to cultural engagement.
There’s a long, rich tradition of Christians separating from culture, with its favorite Bible passages, theology, logic, sentiments, heroes, enemies, cautionary tales, strawmen, and vision of society. And there’s a similar tradition of Christians engaging in culture, with its own version of all the same things. Both streams of thought go back to the early days of the church, and both, I believe, are originally rooted in an honest desire to follow the truth of Christ faithfully.

Many Christians feel themselves stuck in the middle. Maybe you see how bad the culture out there is, but you still don’t want to retreat from it. You may be conservative Biblically, but you can’t figure out why homeless shelters, AIDS relief, community redevelopment, or crisis pregnancy centers are a waste of your time. You know you’re supposed to be discerning about what you watch, but you actually find that a lot of those “secular” films actually seem to strengthen your faith, not weaken it.

The problem of good, right?

The doctrine of common grace plays a brilliant ambassadorial role in this divide. Why? Because it makes the Biblically faithful case for cultural engagement without neutering the Gospel. It acknowledges the depth of our sin, our need for the Cross, our call to evangelism, the reality of spiritual warfare, our capacity for self-deception about our motives, the seductive dangers of competing worldviews, and our desperate need for discernment.

At the same time, I’m reminded that the place where the concepts of shalom, the Creation Mandate, and common grace intersect is very large. Common grace helps us to acknowledge that there are times to embrace culture warmly, and times to be in stark, prophetic opposition to it. And the only durable, Biblical way to do both is to see culture through the lens of common grace.

Common grace allows us to see the Gospel in unlikely places.
What common grace has to say about the arts could fill a book. The good news is that most of that book has been written elsewhere. But let me add a few comments.

I’m encouraged by the emphasis in the Christian subculture on the idea of discernment. We’ve realized there is no such thing as a neutral piece of art or entertainment – that everything carries a worldview. We’re learning how to avoid not just wrong acts (no sex, no violence, no bad language, etc.) but also wrong ideas (bad worldviews, anti-redemptive values, no negative portrayals of Christian characters, etc.)

That’s a good start, but we only do half the job, because we only teach negative discernment. Our whole paradigm is about how tightly to draw the boundaries of protection, of saying “no.” I believe it’s essential to have positive discernment too: to be able to say an enthusiastic “yes” to entertainment that is transcendent, pointing me to my need for Christ, causing me to love my neighbor more. Art that may or may not have a Christian creator or a Christian theme, but that has a Christian effect.

How about a new category of art that reveals “the Gospel in unlikely places?” First, there are non-Christian artists reflecting the Gospel unwittingly, or “seekingly” – I think of God-haunted artists like M. Night Shyamalan, P.T. Anderson, Conor Oberst of Bright Eyes, and Sam Beam of Iron & Wine.

As an example, I think of The Shawshank Redemption, which is tied for the #1 highest-rated film of all time on imdb.com, with by far the highest number of people voting for it as a favorite film. Here is a story saturated in common grace in the midst of evil, written by Stephen King, who was not a confessing Christian the last time I checked. Why does this story have so much power and touch people so deeply, if not for the fact that it taps a deep, unspoken reservoir of passion about the dignity of the imago Dei?

Second is the powerful renaissance of Christian artists who tell the story of creation, fall, redemption, and restoration using language, forms, and images to show the Gospel rather than to preach it. Who know that the best Christian art may not be about Christians or for Christians, use Christian language, or address typical Christian issues – what Derek Webb calls “explicit art.” In the music world, beyond the usual suspects in this category, such as U2 and Sufjan Stevens, check out Bruce Cockburn, Buddy and Julie Miller, Denison Witmer, Kate York, Mindy Smith, Over the Rhine, or Sam Phillips.

As T Bone Burnett says, “You can write about the light, or you can write about what you see by the light.” And thanks to God’s common grace, there are a million surfaces reflecting that light.

The daily application of common grace is simple:

Find the good, the true, and the beautiful wherever it exists in the world. This can be in a person, a work of art, an organization, an interaction, a city, your job, you name it.
Point to its source in Christ. This can be through a silent prayer of thanksgiving, a bold evangelistic proclamation, or anything in between.

Find the good, point to Christ. Repeat.

THE DANGERS OF COMMON GRACE

Okay, admit it. Common grace makes you nervous.

In fact, your mind probably keeps coming back to the classic “slippery slope” argument, which goes something like this: God calls us to be holy. He cannot abide sin. If you crack open the door to common grace, then inevitably you will start to believe that people can be saved by their own goodness. And then you will stop trying to reach the unsaved. So common grace is just a fancy way of sneaking the social gospel in through the side door. An attempt to be in the world and of the world.

Frankly, some of these are valid concerns. Anything that sees the good outside Jesus can shrink the real story of sin and make an affront to the Cross. I know that for me, common grace tempts me to tell myself all those lies about evangelism: it’s not my spiritual gift, I share the Gospel in other ways, that’s not how postmoderns intersect with God’s story. You know the list.

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Comments

David Yamamoto

I'm a Japanese believer. Please excuse me of my awkward English.

My question is not directly connected with this article above. I'm wondering if common grace has anything to do with propitiation by Jesus' death, because some Reformed people teach that common grace was purchased by the propitiation. But I can't find any scripture in the NT which connects C.G. and propitiation.

What about Noaic covenant? Does it have anything to do with Christ's death? Some people say that the burnt offering which Noah sacrificed after the flood symbolizes the cross of Jesus.

Greg Wilkinson

Two men were praying. One was a member of the religious elite, a television evangelist. “Thank you I am not like that despicable Haitian for I have preached the word of God to millions” said the evangelist. The other, a despised Haitian prayed: “Dear God, my house, my wife, my children are gone. Please forgive me for all I have done wrong”.

Which of these two men found God’s favor?

Greg Wilkinson

And behold, a certain lawyer stood up tempting him, and saying, Teacher, having done what, shall I inherit life eternal?

And he said to him, What is written in the law? how readest thou?

But he answering said, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thine understanding; and thy neighbour as thyself.

And he said to him, Thou hast answered right: this do and thou shalt live.

But he, desirous of justifying himself, said to Jesus, And who is my neighbour?

And Jesus replying said, A certain man descended from Jerusalem to Jericho and fell into [the hands of] robbers, who also, having stripped him and inflicted wounds, went away leaving him in a half-dead state.

And a certain priest happened to go down that way, and seeing him, passed on on the opposite side;

and in like manner also a Levite, being at the spot, came and looked [at him] and passed on on the opposite side.

But a certain (Godless?) Samaritan journeying came to him, and seeing [him], was moved with compassion,

and came up [to him] and bound up his wounds, pouring in oil and wine; and having put him on his own beast, took him to [the] inn and took care of him.

And on the morrow [as he left], taking out two denarii he gave them to the innkeeper, and said to him, Take care of him, and whatsoever thou shalt expend more, *I* will render to thee on my coming back.

Which [now] of these three seems to thee to have been neighbour of him who fell into [the hands of] the robbers?

And he said, He that shewed him mercy. And Jesus said to him, Go, and do *thou* likewise.

JESUS MADE IT SIMPLE. THE TEACHERS OF RELIGION MAKE IT COMPLICATED.

Sheridan Voysey

Great thoughts, Scott.

I came to some similar conclusions after reflecting on the altruism shown to victims of the Brisbane floods in Australia earlier this year ( http://sheridanvoysey.com/god-altruism-queensland-floods ). Goodness has a source!

I'll be keeping this article. Brilliant.

Martha Bergin

He said, "I am the way, the truth and the light. No man cometh to the Father save by me." The Way is prayer, sincere prayer, to God, as honestly as we know the Creator. The Way is giving from the heart, allowing Love to flow through us From God to the world. What is the Truth? No lying, not bearing false witness, not lying to ourselves, but finding the narrow path, choosing beauty, being able to see beauty, treating others well, treating them as we would ourselves want to be treated, helping those who hunger, thirst, and suffer in all ways. What is the Light? It is the Divine Truth that illuminates the true manner of existence for humankind. Light banishes darkness, but nowhere can we invoke a darkness that will extinguish a light. And so... those who are living by the Way, the Truth, and the Light know Him. Some are blessed to know his name, to draw close to Him, and to pray and talk with Him daily. Some will be surprised at a later time, when they realize they have been walking with Him and didn't know it. For surely there is only One Way, Truth, and Light. It's like the story of the person who found only one set of footprints in the sand, and then came to know that they are His sustaining footprints, not their own.

Afshin Nejat

Interestingly put. I had been struggling with the Problem of Evil for a while and myself also coined this idea a number of years ago, the "Problem of Good". I had entirely different reasons and results, but there are some parallels in the intermediate zones of both our reasoning processes. It just goes to show that certain elements of Truth must inevitably find expression in multiple beings in whom a certain access to Truth is distributed.

It seems, without even perusing anything more than the highlights of your essay, that your millieu of thought/faith is Protestant Christianity. In my view any solid break from Catholicism which still holds on to certain fundamentals taught by the Christ is always an improvement. What is unfortunate is that the gargantuan effort of protesting what was a massive fraud perpetrating itself as the vehicle of Jesus' message did not go far enough and did not dig deep enough. That is because Truth is not an exoterical process of rejection of the world or of falsehood, though these are necessary. What else is necessary is the interior realization of the Kingdom of God within, and that is the "Truth" that Jesus refers to when he says of some "It is on in them" and of others "It is in your hearts". That's why he says let those with ears that hear, listen and of the rest he says of their hearts that they resemble soils of varying degrees of receptivity to the message of Truth, because they had varying degrees of Truth in them already.

The problem is that the entire message of Jesus was hijacked and distorted, and when there were still groups and texts in existence which could contest this they were hunted down and destroyed or altered by force and not allowed to flourish in their true form. So again those who could not embrace the Truth, and would not if they could, teamed up to hide the Keys of the KIngdom from others who might have. Unfortunately for modern Christians, they are the spiritual legacy of this pillaging of the original and True followers of the Christs (for there were more than one). Those people are often known by the name of "Gnostics", but their Knowledge and resultant Faith are expressed in every single religion in this world in some form, and each also shows the decay and distortion which are wrought upon the True Religion in each case where Light and Love brought down to this hellish and evil dimension of gross matter is attacked an hidden by those here who have an interest in deception and control.

Beware that you have inherited the haggard remains intended for you by those who wanted to hide the Keys. And with the cruel logic of those Archons who manipulate all these to their own ends, you have also inherited all the same susceptibilities to being targeted for persecution, suffering, and annihilation as did those True Christians of the past, but this with only a fraction of the actual message of Christ Jesus. That's who they dilute the Wine of Truth with the bitter waters of wormwood, just as they ravage all other True Values in this plane by similar mechanisms (money over goods, votes over rights, bodies over consciousness, etc). When you realize just HOW evil this world is then the Problem of Good takes on a whole new level of meaning for you. But you will have to be willing to let go of the dried crusts that that they Archons left for you, and soaked with much poison of deception, before you can begin to receive stimulation into the Truth Within if it is within you at all. It is recommended that you do so now while there is time, and you might start by researching Gnosticism in is true meaning, research the mutilations of its texts and others at the hands of the "Christian" Church every since Jesus himself walked the Earth, through the middle ages till today, and perhaps peer into the Nag Hammadi texts though they are also full of corruptions. That will give you a flavor of the massive deception you are up against.

It is ironic that those who harbor much speech about Jesus have so little of his actual message because it is like you have a ray of light which was captured and altered, then refracted into new angles and energies until it acted as an agent of deception against its own original essence to the point that one is more able to find Jesus' original teachings by looking ANYWHERE ELSE THAN "Christianity". But that is rub, as what this deception was also keen on doing is monopolizing anyone's efforts to awaken the Truth Within by teaching a host of dogmas and doctrines which stifle that search, claiming other religions to be red herrings in some fundamental way that doesn't apply to its own monolithic edifice of deception. It became a giant dragnet of self-perpetuating darkness which stifles not only the Light which it first attacked, Jesus' Message, but then fanned out to do the same to all other religions which were in their ancient past also remnants of a Christ Avatar's Message, now long since distorted. But it really seems as if the Archons made a special, elitist-style move with Jesus' work, and for centuries they wrought hell on earth through that effort.

Now soon they will round up their efforts by a world-wide cleansing of another sort through global bodies and wicked high-technology (high in this dense and dark universe), but they will not have their New World Order as they hoped, and Truthful Beings will escape this dimension totally.

Afshin Nejat

But to make a more constructive comment on the contents of your essay in DETAIL, I would suggest that you modify this section of your writing:

"Some … Christians think of the story of salvation like this: Fall, Redemption, Heaven. In this narrative, only saved people have anything of value (people in the world are simply blind and bad), and the purpose of redemption is escape from this world. But if the story of salvation is Creation, Fall, Redemption, and Restoration, then things look different. Non-Christians, created in the image of God, have much wisdom and greatness within them, even though the image is defaced and fallen. Moreover, the purpose of redemption is not to escape the world but to renew it. "

Reconfigure it according to the Truths that a real Gnostic Understanding would provide, then use it to restructure your essay accordingly. Because here is a major cornerstone of deception right in the midst of a major Truth. There was a Fall, and the Fallen created fallen dimensions in their wake, and the Good attempted redemption upon these works until it was given up realizing that this "evil" being could not be redeemed (part of the essence of evil is this quality of infinite recalcitrance). Yet a portion of its works which were partly of a Good essence COULD be redeemed, and this process has been ongoing. Evil dimensions below that threshold were created which were utterly without the Good Grace and cannot be redeemed, and have sought to claim their own share of semi-redeemable domains, an have had minor "success" even though this has all been contained from spreading. The final separation of those who can be redeemed and will be from those who cannot (some because they would not) is now taking place in this area of this Celestial Error.

Therefore at this time your ideas about the widespread "Common Grace" no longer has any value here, as all such really are red herrings of deception, and this world really is in darkness and is utterly irredeemable. All that can be redeemed is already marked and is being gathered to a final Rescue and those who have shown themselves, in this life and many prior to it, to be unworthy WILL NOT BE REDEEMED no matter what they believe, say, think, or do, for the Truth is not in them.

Know the Truth, for it would set you free.

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