Dallas Willard defines a morally good person:

The morally good person is a person who is devoted to advancing the various goods of human life with which they are effectively in contact, in a manner that respects their relative degrees of importance and the extent to which the actions of the person in question can actually promote the existence and maintenance of those goods. Thus, moral goodness is a matter of the organization of the human will called "character."

The mature Christian is a person who is devoted to advancing the various goods of human life with which they are effectively in contact, in a manner that respects their relative degrees of importance and the extent to which the actions of the person in question can actually promote the existence and maintenance of those goods. The mature Christian recognizes that Jesus Christ's teachings are the surest guide to the relative degrees of importance of those goods, especially Jesus' focus on the kingdom of God and the righteousness thereof. They understand that God is the highest good and source of all good in the world, including any good in themselves. They also see that at any moment may reject the good and are therefore themselves in need of constant repentance and are necessarily in need of forgiveness and atonement. By treating Jesus' words as the foundation of their lives, they thereby rely on God's Spirit and receive transforming help from God himself. 

The person who is morally bad or evil is one who is intent upon the destruction of the various goods of human life with which they are effectively in contact, or who is indifferent to the existence and maintenance of those goods.

Anything I’ve left out?

Main Point:

Minor Point

In my effort to make those two points, things got circuitous.

The Christianese

The Passage

16 Behold, I am sending you as sheep in the midst of wolves. Therefore, be as wise as serpents and as innocent as doves. 17 Now, beware of people. For they will hand you over to the Sanhedrin, and in their synagogues they will flog you; 18 then they will bring you before rulers and kings because of me in order to be a testimony to them and the nations. 19 Now, when they hand you over, do not be anxious over how you will speak or what you will say; for what you will say in that hour will be given to you. 20 For you are not the ones speaking, but the Spirit of your Father speaks by you. (Matthew 10:16-20) ^[1]

A Course Correction

But here are some points from the passage and elsewhere in the Bible that give us a more well-rounded point of view:

In a previous post, I mentioned that the Bible itself includes multiple interpretations of the same passage from earlier in the Bible. Update: the technical term for narrative plasticity (my own term) is intentional ambiguity.

Now I want to see if I can demonstrate a moral ambiguity in a Biblical story which is meant to lead to reflection upon more than one moral issue. Below is the story of David and Bathsheba:

Text

Translation

Interpretation

“unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace,” means divinely inspired unity which comes from the teachings related to the gospel. Paul tells them to be working hard to maintain this. There is a unity in the church which has its origin in God’s Spirit. But, this original unity must be maintained by God’s people in the sphere of “the bond of peace.” The bond of peace refers to the peace which Christ preached to those near and far. What Christ preached is the gospel (Ephesians 2:17). More evidence for this is that Paul uses this summary of the gospel story, “one body and one Spirit, just as you were called in one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all who is over all, through all, and in all."

I used to be a Calvinist. I’ve since slowly drifted away from that point of view.

A few years ago I wrote about why.

Below I’ve simplified/clarified those reasons.

I know how complicated these debates get, and we see through a glass darkly. Our understanding of time, determinism, human will and consciousness, moral goodness, the Bible, and our own limits are but a drop in the bucket compared to the thousands of other constraints upon our knowledge of God.

On Christian presuppositions, the Old Testament is inspired by God in a way that makes it useful for understanding God, understanding human nature, understanding morality, and ultimately that foreshadows the gospel of Jesus. There is a sense in which the Old Testament, independently of the new does these things and another sense in which it needs the new to do it. But my main point is that the Old Testament was interpreted plastically, insofar as some of the stories were seen to have more than one meaning, on purpose. And it’s useful and even necessary for Christians to do the same.

In Jordan Peterson’s lectures he makes a great deal of his interpretation of sacrifice as a dramatization of the fact that short term loss, especially of an ideal (perfect lamb, unblemished bull, etc) leads us to an ideal future. Or rather, sacrifice is a symbolic habit of future orientation as a result of human self-consciousness and fear of death. I would be hard pressed to think of an Old Testament scholar who puts it exactly that way. Peterson isn’t diminishing the fact that the ancients believed that sacrifice worked because of the gods. But he is pointing out that the principle motivation behind it comes from a line of reasoning that is profound and extremely powerful for civilization and individual self-realization.

One of the saddest claims I hear from Christians struggling with suffering, sin, or bad circumstances is “I can’t do anything about it so I’ll just have to let God do it.”

It’s a claim that sneaks into so many contexts. Even questions like, “What are some helpful tips that could make us better listeners?” elicit responses like, “rely on God’s grace.” My guess is that churches have accidentally provided an environment where phrases with very little actionable content are considered wise.

I saw a goofy journalist on Twitter claim, in essence, that Jesus opposed “conservative family values.”

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Leave aside for a moment that Jesus wasn’t much of a screamer (Matthew 12:19-20).

As an experiment let’s see what the gospels related concerning Jesus’ views about the topics of conservative family values:

Marriage/Celibacy/Divorce

Matthew 19:3-12 ESV And Pharisees came up to him and tested him by asking, “Is it lawful to divorce one's wife for any cause?” He answered, “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.” They said to him, “Why then did Moses command one to give a certificate of divorce and to send her away?” He said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so. And I say to you: whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery.” The disciples said to him, “If such is the case of a man with his wife, it is better not to marry.” But he said to them, “Not everyone can receive this saying, but only those to whom it is given. For there are eunuchs who have been so from birth, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by men, and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. Let the one who is able to receive this receive it.”

Children

Matthew 19:13-15 ESV Then children were brought to him that he might lay his hands on them and pray. The disciples rebuked the people, but Jesus said, “Let the little children come to me and do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of heaven.” And he laid his hands on them and went away.

Parents

Matthew 15:3-6 ESV He answered them, “And why do you break the commandment of God for the sake of your tradition? For God commanded, ‘Honor your father and your mother,’ and, ‘Whoever reviles father or mother must surely die.’ But you say, ‘If anyone tells his father or his mother, “What you would have gained from me is given to God,” he need not honor his father.’ So for the sake of your tradition you have made void the word of God.

Jesus' Teaching Goes Beyond