WE are called to goodness

​I have done some good in my life - I've served and loved other people in ways that I'm proud of.

I have done some bad in my life - I've abused and taken advantage of people in ways that I'm ashamed of.

I am a living example that people have the potential to do good OR bad. In fact, we all are. I've never met someone who seemed capable of doing only all good or all bad.

The question I hear sometimes is - which were were created to do? What kind of people were we created to be - good or bad?

Early in the Christian story, God created humans. After he did, he looked upon them and said - this is good. If you read this story in Genesis, you can almost feel the emotions of a God overwhelmed with a sense of goodness as he witnessed the perfect harmony of his creation.

You could almost hear God saying, this has the potential to be a really good story.

Then in that same Genesis story, Adam and Eve made a mistake. They became the first two people to demonstrate that no one is capable of doing all good.

For some of us, this is where creation changed the story we tell ourselves about the creator. For some of us, this became the story of an angry God somehow caught off guard by the capacity of his creation to fall out of harmony. It became the story of an angry God demanding that we spend the rest of our lives trying to get right with him.

It's a narrative we've adopted about God, and one we've too often adopted as a model for our relationships with one another.

We've adopted it to respond to our kids in anger when they make mistakes. We've adopted it to demand repentance from everyone we feel has ever done us wrong. We've adopted it to embrace revenge over forgiveness, punshiment over rehabilitation, division over unity.

We've adopted this narrative of God as permission to at times play that angry version of God - God's who demand compliance from one another - or else.

Well I am here to tell you, I personally don't adopt that narrative of God. Not anymore.

You know, when Jesus was pressed to identify the two most important 'rules' in the Christian faith, he responded that those rules were to love God and love one another - even our enemies - we are to love them too. In fact, you get the sense Jesus wanted us to love them the most.

If God was so angrily certain we are people bent toward evil, how on earth does he think we are capable of the kind of goodness it takes to love an enemy? How could a God so angry at us for our mistakes ask us to love our mistake riddle enemies?

I was sitting the other day playing a game with my boys. There came a point in the game when all three of us were laughing so hard there were tears. In that moment, I felt overwhelmed by love. Not love from my boys, but love from God.

The God that for far too many years I lived in fear of, I felt incredibly loved by. How could someone who has made his fair share of bad choices be blessed with even a moment filled with so much goodness?

Well, I want to tell you that your calling is goodness. When you screw up, that calling doesn't get cancelled, nor does it undo what God declared over you long ago - this is good.

I am sitting here writing this right now out of love and out of a sense of answering that call to goodness. Not to make things right with God or with anyone else, but out of honoring my potential for goodness.

Before the day is done - there's a good chance I'll also honor my potential for making a mistake.

Maybe human nature will be to punish me for that mistake, God's nature will be to love me through it. God's nature will continue to see my potential for goodness, just the same as he sees your potential.

Because God is always calling us back to that creation story, the story he created, the story he looked down upon and said - this is good.

Our potential is goodness - God said so - and he has never stopped calling us to it.