GOOD vs. NICE

"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." - Edmund Burke (1729-1797).

So Geoff and I are starting to read "Wild at Heart" by John Eldredge together and it got us on an interesting thought process. It got us thinking about this difference between nice and good. I think that they have become almost synonmous and they aren't supposed to be.

According to Dictionary.com:

Nice (adj.)
1: pleasant or pleasing or agreeable in nature or appearance; "what a nice fellow you are and we all thought you so nasty"- George Meredith; "nice manners"; "a nice dress"; "had a nice time at the party"; "the corn and tomatoes are nice today" [ant: nasty]
2: socially or conventionally correct; refined or virtuous; "from a decent family"; "a nice girl" [syn: decent]

Good (adj.): Worthy of respect; honorable

From these explainations nice does what is socially correct and doesn't rock the boat. The nice girl who says please and thank you and never speaks unless spoken to. The good boy who always sits still and colors inside the lines. Pleasant and agreeable. Good demands respect and honor. A good woman is one who speaks up when someone is being treated unfairly and disciplines her kids when they are out of line. A good man doesn't sit by and passively watch someone talk down to his mother, he steps in and stops it. Goodness is a verb.

I think that goodness is scary. Nice is easy. Goodness means things have consequences, and not everything is right. To be good you have to take a stand. Everyone will at least act like they like you if you are nice. If you are good you will inherently be going against bad, and therefore people against powers and principalities and people. Because no one can look around and call this world good. Honestly the world isn't even nice.

Scenario:
Lets go back in time a bit. It's the turn of the century and it's still legal to own slaves. You are an heir to an affluent white plantation owner who just died. The previous owner was wel known as a hard master. The slaves were scared of him, and he was certain they were only property. You know better, and you have to decide what to do with the plantation and all of it's slaves.

1. Option 1: You take over the plantation, and treat the slaves as well as is possible. You feed them decent meals and let them have breaks. The slaves don't complain; because, especially in comparison to the last owner, you are great. Among your own social class, people may whisper that your a little soft, but nobody openly speaks against you.
2. Option 2: You free all your slaves, and then offer them the option of working for you at a fair rate. They now have the option of continuing to work for you with job security or starting their life somewhere else. They can work to earn money to buy freedom for other family members at other plantations ect.

Can you take this even a step further. The north and south went to war over this topic. The war wasn't nice, but was it good? I don't know the answer to this, but I know that if we hadn't the Confederacy would probably still be a slave owning country.

Ok, so if that works for us, why is it hard to understand from God? Often we ask and complain that the world is not nice and therefore God must not be good. After all how could a good God let violence happen? (This also presents the problem of us messing up the world vs. God messing up the world.)Often people talk about the God of the Old Testament vs. the God of the New Testament. He's the same one, and doesn't change, so how does that make sense. It is obvious throughout the Old Testament that God was often angry and killed people. This is not inconsistent from the New Testament though. We need to modify this picture of Jesus:
This is not the guy that spoke against the Pharisees and tore apart the temple. Jesus saw wrong and his goodness couldn't be near it. The only thing He could do is fight it. That is what we are called to too. We are called to have the kind of goodness that wrongness runs in the other direction. Darkness can't be where light it. If Jesus were nice He would have talked to the Pharisees and kept the social rules. Instead he hung around with sinners, and talked about letting slaves be free. Jesus was a dangerous man.


Do you want to be nice or do you want to be good? Do you want God to be nice or do you want him to be good? It's an interesting question. I think that most people would say they want God to be good, but then are upset when He is not nice. Sometimes they are mutually exclusive.

I welcome thoughts or comments on this, cuz it's big difficult topic. Agree with me, don't agree with me, yell scream and send angry letters to my house if you want...just think about it :)