{"id":1008,"date":"2009-06-23T09:53:04","date_gmt":"2009-06-23T14:53:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/shieldsgroup.com\/?p=1008"},"modified":"2009-06-23T09:53:05","modified_gmt":"2009-06-23T14:53:05","slug":"what-it-takes-to-be-a-good-man","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shieldsgroup.com\/blog\/2009\/06\/23\/what-it-takes-to-be-a-good-man\/","title":{"rendered":"What it takes to be “a good man”"},"content":{"rendered":"

As we celebrated Fathers\u2019 Day, <\/strong>most of us took a moment to recall our fathers. My father was like many \u2013 he had lots of good character qualities. And he had some areas of his life where he could have improved. Patience was not one of his strengths. That\u2019s probably why I never became a fisherman. But one of the strengths my father had was that he was a good man.<\/p>\n

Some time ago that phrase, \u201che\u2019s a good man\u201d <\/strong>entered my daughter\u2019s vocabulary. She would talk about professors at college and say, \u201cDad \u2013 you\u2019d really like him. He\u2019s a good man.\u201d One day she was talking about Jim Bell and she said, \u201cHe\u2019s a good man.\u201d Then it happened\u2026.<\/p>\n

I was going to visit someone who was dying in the hospital and she said, \u201cDad \u2013 you\u2019re a good man.\u201d That was a Fathers\u2019 Day present to me \u2013 and it wasn\u2019t even Fathers\u2019 Day.<\/p>\n

I think that all of us have the desire to be thought of as good. <\/strong>We want people, when they look at us, to think of us as moral beings. We\u2019ve a desire to be regarded as holy. Everyone feels this way.\u00a0 Even atheists. I say that because I read a lot of atheistic material online. Repeatedly, the atheists writing try to portray a moral superiority. They want others to see them, not as unethical, but as more ethical than religious folks. Even atheists have a desire to appear holy. This desire to be thought of as good people is everywhere. It\u2019s almost a good desire.<\/p>\n

But there\u2019s a huge difference between being thought of as a good person and simply being a good person. <\/strong>That difference is what Jesus is addressing in the text from which the attached sermon is from.<\/p>\n