Thursday, January 30, 2020

A Good Man?

I recently heard of a man who went far out of his way to spend time with his kids, and I said that he was a good man. Then I heard that he had been accused of doing something horrible, which, if true, would substantially alter my opinion of this man. This moment reminded me that human beings are complex, capable of doing both good things and bad things, even within a few moments of each other. People are neither all good nor all bad, which makes them very difficult to judge.

I'm grateful that I'm not the ultimate arbiter of whether a person is good or not, and I'm glad that there's more to God's system of judging people than a simple good/bad, pass/fail, heaven/hell dichotomy. People are complex, and I'm glad I don't have to judge them.

Maybe I shouldn't be so quick to judge anyone to be "a good person," since, on some level, I know that it's always more complex than that.

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