Mostly Good

Do you remember the part in The Princess Bride when the main character, Wesley, was "mostly dead"?

I was talking to a skeptic the other day about Christianity. I don't do it very well, I'm quite sure. I tend to ask questions rather than smack them with a cross and have an altar call. But, hey, we all have our ways. Anyway, he voiced the big opposition. "How is it right for God to send people to Hell for one little thing?" What one little thing? Well, it varies, of course, but in this case it was "not accepting Christ". I tried to explain that no one goes to Hell for not accepting Christ. It is for their sin. But, as you can imagine, that doesn't cut it.

"I'm not so bad."

By what measure?

"I don't kill anyone. I pay my taxes. I'm a nice guy. I treat people the way I wish to be treated." (Echoes of the rich young ruler.)

So what's so bad? I mean, seriously, what has this guy done to deserve Hell? Let's set aside the silly notion that a temporal crime deserves a temporary punishment. Makes no sense at all. You don't pay for the time you spent doing the crime; you pay for the depravity of the crime. Okay, so what is so depraved? Well, let's take this guy as an example. No, really, a nice guy -- pays his bills, takes care of his kids when they visit, treats his live-in girlfriend well, even takes care of her kids when they visit, gets along with her husband just fine, and on it goes. A really nice guy. Of course, the fact that he has determined that adultery and fornication (for starters) are not issues of morality speaks volumes. Not that he's horribly immoral for this. It's the entire concept. "I don't really much care what God thinks about what is right and wrong. I will do what I believe to be right and then measure myself by that." Or, to put it another way, "I will be like the Most High." And there is the depravity of the crime.

In The Princess Bride, Wesley was mostly dead, but he recovered. We, on the other hand, see ourselves as mostly good, from which there is no recovery because, after all, if we are not wholly good, we are not at all good. And there is no one good but God. "Mostly good" is neither mostly good nor good enough. Without a righteousness transplant we're doomed. Of course, getting that across to someone who is mostly good is just as easy as getting it across to someone who is mostly dead (perhaps because the one is the other). Fortunately, that is the function of the Holy Spirit (John 16:8).