this post was submitted on 15 May 2025
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That not only am I not a good person, it's mostly impossible for a person to be truly good. Even knowing what good is, in its entirety, is nigh impossible. The best that can be done isn't necessarily within my energy and/or skill.
There are wrongs that cannot meaningfully be righted.
Doing a little good some of the time is the most I can ever aspire to.
The definition of what is "good" changes depending on the person, the situation, etc. It is like defining what is "perfect".
So what happens when two people in the same or similar situation define the same action, one defines it as good, the other as evil? It's pretty easy to construct a situation where each person feels morally justified in killing the other.
That doesn't seem like a very useful morality.
I didn't say it was a moral system, I never even used the word, it is human psychology and philosophy. Even in your example I could say "This was was to liberate X" then someone else says "That war killed so many civilians!". Someone fires a bunch of people to save the rest from losing their jobs, the fired people say it was bad, the others it was good. Same event, two views. You can have "Hot summers are perfect", the next person hates them.
Autism enters the chat
That's Jesus' "why do you call me good? Only the Father is good". You can never be perfect nor infallible, of course, but maybe you'll be good enough and God will approve of you and that's all we can work towards. No need to use this understanding to give yourself moral allowances though: let your mistakes be mistakes and not plans for immorality.
Woah, did Jesus actually say that (AFAWK)? Because I knew a Christian Scientist who said the whole religion's view of Jesus was that he wasn't a god, he was "a perfect man". That quote sounds like he was literally disclaiming this.
Of course! Mark 10:18. One must remember Jesus was a miraculous prophet of God (not dissimilar to Moses, but his birth was more "special", more akin that of Isaac), a monotheist that constantly referenced "the law and the prophets" (several callbacks to Solomon in particular whom I also hold in high regard, primarily because of Ecclesiastes) and how he wasn't here to break the law but to enforce it... he wasn't followed because he wasn't a "Jew" and it was a new and revolutionary religion he had established, he was followed because he WAS one and remembered/knew what it meant to be one in earnest. What Rome/Paulian tradition did afterwards with the image of Jesus, the creation of a entirely separate dogma in which 'God' is actually a pantheon and also partly FLESH AND BONE/anthropomorphic (following their pagan/polytheistic traditions, and because if not the empire might be reticent to accept such drastic changes), is something else.
There's no "perfect" man, not even the prophets can be with all their God-given information and their great character, as no man is omniscient nor fully in control of themselves. And Jesus goes even harder, saying he's not even "good", because such a strict category only belongs to God. We can only be "good enough", and that's for God to decide.
While it may sound similar it's meaningfully different. Jesus' statement asserts that good is an attritibute that can be had by some being, just not you or me. I am asserting that good is not something anyone can be. There's no deity involved here.
I feel you. The more you know, the less you can do any good. You can try and try and try all around and all you achieved by doing your best in doing good is discovering more bad and feel like you've failed altogether. I try to stick to the thought of that it's only MY best I can do, I'm not almighty and everywhere. And maybe I just have set my standards/morals too high.