Is he good or bad?

Moving Forwards 5 by svilen at free images.com

Amanda is teaching the kids about the Civil Rights movement and segregation in the South.  They are reading a historical fiction children’s book about Birmingham in 1963.  To accompany this study we watched a documentary yesterday made in 1997 called “4 Little Girls” about the 16th Street Baptist church of Birmingham bombing that killed four little girls.  As we were watching the documentary, Brooke and Landon, kept asking whether individuals in the show were good or bad?  In typical movies, especially children shows, the characters are easily distinguished as good or bad.  You have the hero and the villain.

Finally, I paused the movie, and with the help of Amanda, tried to explain that history and people can’t always be put into a category of good or bad.  That our history is not as clean and simple as fiction stories.  That the people did some bad things, but they also did some good things.

I get frustrated with our oversimplification of historical figures.  I am listening to a book now on Lee and Grant.  Recent history is wanting to make Lee and other Confederate leaders bad.  But history isn’t that simple.  We have to understand there is a bit of good and bad in all of us!

In fact, as I have been teaching the ladies’ class Hebrews 11 and studying these great characters of faith, i told them the story of us watching our documentary too.  You see Hebrews 11 contains Biblical heroes being praised for their faith, but many of them listed had noticeable flaws.  They weren’t all good, even though they made the good list!  In fact, the writer, who was writing for the purpose of encouraging Christians to persevere in the faith, focuses solely on the faithful acts of the saints he mentions.  He doesn’t talk about Abraham’s half-truths, Jacob’s treachery, Moses’ murder of the Egyptian, or Samson’s foolishness.  He talks about their faith!

This should give us hope.  We are not perfect either.  We are not all good, and we certainly are not all bad!  But being a Christian should mean living a life of faith.  Faith that perseveres and trusts in the promises. Faith that is accepted by the grace of God despite our flaws, failures, and down-right badness!  Let’s remember that God expects our faithfulness, not perfection; and let’s be merciful to others realizing they are not all bad either, just because they have some flaws!  

Permanent link to this article: https://www.joshketchum.com/is-he-good-or-bad/

1 comment

1 ping

  1. Very true!

  1. […] Is he good or bad? […]

Comments have been disabled.