How Good is Good Enough for God?

We often think of God as accepting ‘good’ people, but is this actually true? How good is good enough? Is it hypocritical that sometimes Christians themselves do wrong things, all the while believing that they will go to heaven?

In this talk, Jonty Allcock relates Jesus' encounter with the rich man from the Gospel of Mark (Mark 10:17-27). Jonty argues that being good is not the way to be accepted by God. First, we need to change our thinking about what is good, from a relative scale of goodness to an absolute scale of goodness. Most people use a ladder mentality, where we compare ourselves to where other people are on the 'goodness' ladder. Jonty suggests that if God exists, then a better illustration is to think of God as defining goodness in an aeroplane flying high overhead. We cannot get there on our own. Once we realise that we fall short of God's standard of goodness, we are in a position to realise the purpose of Jesus' life – to bring us back to God because we cannot get there on our own.

The talk last about 20 minutes and is followed by a questions and answers session.

© 2015 Cambridge Inter-Collegiate Christian Union (CICCU) and Jonty Allcock