The BBC reports today on the Independent’s recent compilation of a British “Good List”. Not just those people who did something good, or changed things for better, but those who expressly sought to do so.
The list is interesting. Most of Britain’s religions have someone on their because of their affiliation with that religion. We have a Muslim leader, a rabbi and a Sikh leader. That affiliation qualifies their inclusion.
I would expect some of those on the list to be followers of the Lord Jesus Christ, but no-one is on there because they are a Christian leader. Somehow that doesn’t qualify. Peter Tatchell does feature, however.
All of which highlights the obvious question a list like this raises: How do you define good? What list you end up with depends totally on the definition of good.
“Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone” (Mark 10:18) Not even the rich man Jesus was addressing was good, because the man had failed to realise that goodness required love of God as well as love of neighbour. More precisely, he hadn’t left everything to follow Jesus and the gospel (10:29).
So what is good?
- Absolutely: God alone, and his Son Jesus Christ
- Relatively: Those who are marked out by their sacrificial devotion and love to the Lord Jesus Christ
- Absolutely: Those who have God’s unique goodness imputed to them by their union with his Son
The first gives you a “good list” of 2. The third gives you a “good list” of many billions, growing exponentially with every century, and with no way to rank them at all. The second is hard to measure, but gives the only meaningful list of 50. But I don’t think that was the Indey’s criterion.
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