Questions #3 and 4...

These two are closely related and so get double billing.

Question 3:  Are you a good person?
Question 4: What do you need to do to become a good person?

Most of us like to think we are good people.  And most of us get offended if others consider us not good.  I remember a friend telling me that a church in her community put her on their prayer list because they were concerned about her "goodness."  Ouch.  None of us like that.

And, who are we to decide other people aren't good?  Are only Christians good?  Who decides?  On what basis?  What happens to "bad" people?  Do we want to go there?

Begin with the definition of terms.  If we are talking theological understandings of who God is and who we are--and we need to understand that if we are the people of God--then we are talking the theological definition of "good."  It has to do with sin and sinlessness,  not whether we are nice people.  Most of the people I know are nice.  Most of us try not to be offensive and to play well with others.  After all, we learned that in Kindergarten.  A friend of a friend posted her kindergartener's learnings in his first two weeks.  Week one:  Don't cut yourself with scissors.  Week two:  Don't cut other people with scissors.  That about says it all.  That's what it means to be nice...but even total restraint from scissor-cutting does not make us good.  

When Jesus is asked by the rich, young man what it takes to be good, Jesus says "only God is good."  (Matthew 19) This young man worked hard at doing the right things, at following the laws--which probably made him a pretty nice person.  In his own estimation, he was a pretty darn good Jew...not an easy accomplishment.  But he didn't even get a pat on the back from Jesus...only this worthy-of-a-politician-statement that "only God is good."

What makes us good?  Well, frankly, being nice to each other ought to go a long way!  The nice young man thought he had dedicated his life to eliminating sin by following the law.  Why would that not make him good?  Well, the young man challenges, which commands am I supposed to be keeping?  Jesus summarizes.  The young man insists, "I have kept all these."  (SCORE!)  And Jesus says, "If you wish to be perfect (also translated merciful or compassionate), sell your possessions and give the money to the poor...then come and follow me."  Oops.

The very nice, rich, young man is not, after all, good.  You could list his reasons for not selling his possessions.  He earned them.  He can do more good if he keeps them.  Those people will just waste the resources.  He doesn't want to be a burden on someone else.  It's not fair.  Whatever.  But the bottom line is Jesus knew that the money was his real focus.  Keeping the commandments was easy for him.  Being poor was hard.  He wanted to be a nice, rich person, not a good poor person.

And the bottom line for each of us is that there is always something that will keep us from being good because we are not God.  And there is the answer to question 4...what can we do to make ourselves good?  Nothing. If we as individuals could, maybe, possibly, be good by following law, being completely unselfish, living in full relationship with God as Jesus did...even if we might, possibly, could...we live in a world so deep in sin that we really can't escape it.  Does an oppressed worker anywhere make an article of clothing or morsel of food that we consume?  Do any of our actions result in oppression, whether we know it or not?  as a racial group?  a political group?  a nationality?  And lest we think that perhaps living alone as a hermit as many early Christians did to escape sin, is the avoidance of relationship not another sinful behavior?  Well, we will just hang out with other good people--which leads to judgment--and we're back to sin.

What's a nice person to do?  and where do we go from here...

Next.

Answer # 2

Question #2 is "How many good things should you do to make up for your sin?"

Answer:  None.  You can't make up for your sins by doing good things.  Not to say that doing good things is not a good idea.  But if you think about it, you really can't "make up for your sins."  For one thing, how do you decide what makes up for what sin?  Some churches have developed elaborate calculations to accomplish this.  But if we are in the business of determining what makes up for our sins, and then assigning or accomplishing it, haven't we made ourselves God?

Or, going down a different road...if you are "doing something" to make up for a sin, are you really doing it in the mind-set or with the heart you need to do it sincerely?  When we fought as kids, my mom made us "kiss and make up" instead of fight.  Believe me, I did what she said, but what I really wanted to do was continue fighting with my sister.  I had not yet straightened her out so she could enthusiastically adopt my position!  I still had work to do, for Pete's sake!!!!

When we said "I'm sorry," that made everything all better?  Whether our sin is a tiny infraction or a major, horrible act, how on earth can we "make up" for what we have done?

Addiction programs teach us to make amends for the wrongs we have committed.  That's a good thing. We need to make amends, probably more often than we would like to admit.  But making amends is not "making up for" our wrongdoing.

One more thought...if it is possible to make up for our sins, and if we are responsible for so doing, we spend (or should spend) a great deal of time and energy figuring out what we should do, trying to do it to the best of our ability, then constantly evaluating and second-guessing whether or not we achieved "making up." If the point of making up for our sins is to put us back into relationship with God and with each other, have we actually done that?  Or have we become incessantly and obsessively focused on the sin and the punishment instead of the relationships we were trying to mend?  Where has God gone in the equation?  And what if the person refuses to accept our "make up" efforts?  What then?

We simply can't make up for our sins by doing good things.  So what do we do?  We answer question #3.