“Taste and see that the Lord is good…”

Bill’s hair said it all.  Or so it seemed.  He taught high school science in the Christian school I chose to do my student teaching internship.  I wanted my professor to see the difference in a Christian educational environment as well as to be around others in my spiritual family.  The internship lasted for six weeks, and the professor did come to Christ at the end of the semester.  But I’m off track.  As a science teacher, Bill was kind of a bizarre character, occasionally muttering to himself, at times unpredictable.  Sometimes students would come out of his class asking each other, “Did you get anything he said?”  Questions like that were the rule in those days.  But regularly Bill would come up with something brilliant, a flash of insight or a more than appropriate word, that reminded us why he was still on the faculty.  I saw this most clearly after the principal asked the teachers to volunteer to speak in rotation at chapel on the characteristics of God.  Bill volunteered as one of many.  He chose the goodness of God.  When the rest of us learned of his topic, we collectively wondered what in the world he would say.  The drama built as his turn drew closer.  Finally the day arrived, and you could hear a pin drop as he approached the podium.

“I have chosen the goodness of God,” he began.  “You might wonder why I chose this characteristic.  What do I know about goodness?  Not much…” as he scratched his head.  He continued, “What exactly is goodness anyway?  What does it mean to be good?  I looked up the definition, and then I looked up the etymology of the word good.  Good originally came from the Old English word, god.  We say ‘goodbye’ when people leave us, but goodbye is a contraction of “God be with ye.”  It was shortened to goodbye.  That shows us the historical connection between good and God.”  Now came the flash that forever stuck with me:  “So while I am supposed to talk about the goodness of God, I really can’t, because I don’t know goodness is.  But I can talk and will talk about the ‘God-ness’ of good, because we can’t know good without God.”  The God-ness of good!  Bill did it again!

Can we know what is good by ourselves?  No.  We are fallen, petty, self-centered creatures with an evil streak running straight through the core of our hearts.  What we call “good” are those things that please us.  But who says we or our happiness is the measure of goodness?  People have taken extreme steps, including killing their spouses and all kinds of other horrible things, to make themselves happy.  So we must rely on something or someone else — God — to tell us what is good.  And this assumes, of course, that God, objectively in and of himself, is and knows good.  Jesus said as much: “No one is good—except God alone” (Mark 10:18).

But the ‘God-ness’ of good is something that he wants us to experience:  “Taste and see that the Lord is good,” David tells us in Psalm 34:8.  How is that possible?  Only by wading into the experience of a life bent on discovering just how good he is.  And he invites us to do exactly that.  “Taste my dish!” the cook says.  “Feast your eyes on this!”  It is an invitation, a calling of our attention to enjoy something pleasant, enjoyable and delightful.  God doesn’t invite us to that which is ugly, distasteful, evil, corrupt, rotten or foul.  We may find those things in a fallen world, but not in our God.

A life of continually tasting the God-ness of good should look like Psalm 107.  Verse one sets the tone: “Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good…”  The rest of the psalm gives evidence of people in various forms of difficulty and trouble, out of which the Lord delivers them.  As a result we see the repeated refrain: “Oh , that men would give thanks to the Lord for his goodness, and for his wonderful works to the children of men…” (vs. 8, 15, 21, 31, NKJ).  This repetition is a model for our lives.  We should be able to share story after story of God’s goodness toward us.

In Matthew 25 we find the parable that gave rise to what many serious minded believers want to hear from their Lord in heaven, “Well done, good and faithful servant!” (vs. 21, 23).  This word good is the same one that Jesus said earlier was only true of God.  A contradiction?  No.  It merely confirms the God-ness of good in these servants.  They wisely did the good their master had intended for them to do.

So how is it with you?  Will God call you good in heaven?  Is his God-ness evident in you today?