Do Good

I was telling a friend about my trip to Colorado and recounting how I was captivated by Psalm 37:3-5. To make certain we were communicating, I said, “This is the passage that begins, ‘Trust in the Lord, and do good.’”

My friend interjected, “Do good?! What on earth does that mean?”

That’s a great question—and that’s why you and I are meeting on this page. What does it mean to do good?

Performing true good is comprised of two elements: the act of doing something good and the motive underlying the good action you took. In other words, lots of people do good things for the wrong reason. Others truly do what’s good.

Good is pervasive, meaning: We all have an innate understanding of what is good. We know evil when we see it because it is contrasted against our common sense of goodness. Good is an understood standard for all but the deranged or deceived.  

I’m not talking about right versus wrong. If you innately understood right from wrong, you would never make a mistake. But what is good, you know, understand, and recognize.

Which begs the question: How do you automatically know what is good? Where did good come from and where did the standard defining good originate?

I explored some of these questions in my book, Swagger: Keeping Your Wits When Others Are Not. In the chapter titled “Good,” I recount Plato’s (429-347 BC) musings about absolute good. After examining the existence of good from all angles of reason, he identified what he termed the Idea of the Good. He classed his Idea of the Good as the supreme source from which all that was considered divine by the Greeks flowed.

Plato didn’t call his Idea of Good, God, but he did discern that for good to truly be good, of necessity it must come to us and make itself known. Private, distant, or disengaged goodness is not truly good, Plato reasoned.

The source from which all of God’s qualities emanate is His goodness.

Although Plato lived four centuries before Christ came, he anticipated the Incarnation: Christmas, i.e., the coming down to us of Absolute Goodness, God Incarnate. God left heaven to introduce Himself to us. His goodness required nothing less of Him and His goodness must be made evident to each person. Thus, the common sense of good among humanity.

When Psalm 37:3 tells us to “do good,” it is telling us to represent our Father in heaven who is good. This means that in order to truly do good, we must know and understand God.

In my previous article, “Trust Me,” where we explored the preceding phrase, we see now why we are supposed to, “Trust in the Lord:” Trust in the Lord in order to accurately and compellingly represent His goodness—His essence, the basic awareness of Him—to yourself and the onlookers in your life.

The Bible tells us, “God is love” (1 Jn. 4:8), and this is true. But God is lots of other things as well. He is also just, merciful, righteous, gracious, longsuffering, and filled with lovingkindness, just to name a few of His qualities. What Plato identified, and what verse 3 is isolating for our understanding, is that the source from which all of God flows and all His qualities emanate, is His goodness. Whatever all else God is, fundamentally He is good.

As I wrote earlier, for much of my life I struggled to trust God. I didn’t like Him, and didn’t figure He liked me much either, but we were bound to each other out of obligation on His part and necessity on mine. I never thought much about God’s goodness, but when His goodness—or the notion of His goodness—did register in my awareness, once again I stumbled. I suppose it’s no surprise that a man who didn’t trust God would not be convinced of His goodness.

But then, neither did I pay much attention to God’s qualities. I was too busy avoiding Him. From my vantage point, when God showed up, bad things happened to me.

This bothered me immensely. I couldn’t reconcile why God afflicted me when there were so many obvious higher-priority targets for His developmental love, i.e., discipline. I was doing my level best. What more did He expect? Anything more was unreasonable, it seemed to me. Punitive even. After all, all I can do is all I can do.

But with some frequency, difficulty came into my life and I was told this was God’s doing to refine my love for Him and develop my Christian life. I never said it to Him, but I often thought, Your plan isn’t doing much to develop my love. But one thing’s for sure: You’ve made me really gun shy around you.

It was evident that bad things happened to others as well, but as I considered what I knew of their circumstance, I could rarely correlate their hardship with the judgement of God. On the contrary. I could see His goodness in whatever their plight. But since I didn’t trust God to begin with, it was reasonable to conclude that while God was good to others, He was not good to me.

I am captivated by His humility.

As God resolved my distrust, I still questioned His goodness to me. One evening during an honest conversation, I dropped my guard with a close friend who always signs his emails, “God is good.” I told him I didn’t doubt God’s goodness to him, but that I was struggling to see God’s goodness to me. He turned on me with a sharp rebuke, “What part of the Bible telling you God is good do you not believe?”

I laughed off his reply and changed the subject. But I vowed it would be a cold day in hell before I dropped my guard again on anything regarding questions about God.

Rationally, of course God is good. The Bible says so. But reconciling the good God of the Bible with the punitive God of my life, experience, and [sorry] theology was beyond my capability. Then, while I was busy keeping my distance, God ambushed me. Rather than the frontal approach of Scripture, He came from an oblique angle using Plato’s work.

To this day, I’m not sure why Plato’s reasoning resolved my doubts about God’s goodness and the declarations of Scripture did not. But once it dawned on me that everything about God must originate in His goodness, then I gained sufficient traction to see God with fresh eyes. Once this transpired, I started with Plato’s Idea of the Good and worked outward.

Only in knowing God’s goodness do we stand any probability of doing good that is representative of Him.

There are many things to admire about God, but I am captivated by His humility. If He harbored pride of authorship in the Bible, He would have let me continue to twist in my torrent of doubt and confusion, Bible in hand. But God is not proud. He stooped to my desperate place, considered my confusion, and must have said to Himself, Let’s come at this from another direction. Let’s try Plato’s work… and one day, by some happenstance I don’t recall, I picked up Plato’s dialogues on “first things.” The rest is history.

Came the day where I waited until late-dark to leave the house. I needed the cloister of night to hide my tears and conceal my troubled words. Father God, I began—and got no farther before the dam broke in my heart and flowed from my eyes. I must apologize. I hate my doubt about your goodness, but I couldn’t see anything beyond my distrust. I see now. I see that you do not possess goodness as one of your qualities, but that it is the core of your being from which everything else about you flows. I see now. I’m so sorry for my doubt. I believe, Father. Please help my unbelief. I know you have forgiven me. Thank you for not giving up on me. Thank you for condescending to put up with my myriad questions and doubts. I apologize, Father. Thank you for leading me to read Plato. That’s pretty ingenious, but then, you are of all people most ingenious. I’m grateful. And now, if you will please, I must know more about your goodness for I truly want to know and understand what makes you tick.

Why have I told you this story?

When Psalm 37:3 exhorts us to “Trust in the Lord, and do good,” it is telling us that in order to do good from the right motive and in representative fashion, we must trust God, not in a pithy Sunday School way, but trust God with deep, visceral conviction that comes from knowing Him personally. At the most fundamental level, this means trusting that God is good and knowing that all else comprising God originates in and flows from His goodness. Only in knowing God’s goodness do we stand any probability of doing good that is representative of Him.

In short, you can’t do true good if you don’t know—in a deep, trusting way—the One who is good. Only by understanding God as good can you accurately represent Him by doing good.

“Trust in the Lord.” This is the starting point, the vantage point, the crucial point from which you understand all the phrases that follow in verses 3-5, but especially the admonition to “do good.”

Perhaps the most famous quote about God’s goodness was penned by C.S. Lewis in his “Narnia” fantasy where he utilizes a lion named Aslan to portray Jesus Christ. Contemplating the great lion, Susan asks if he is safe. Mr. Beaver replies, “Safe? Who said anything about safe? 'Course he isn't safe. But he's good.”

God is not safe, He is God. But He is good. As His advocate, so you too must be. Trust Him, and do good.