GREAT THINGS ENTERPRISE
CLAUDE BLACK
Mark 10:33
Be Good and Do Good
In a recent conversation with a friend about governments—especially bad governments—I said that governments aren’t inherently bad; rather, it is the people who make up a government who can be bad. On reflection, I think my statement was a bit too broad, for bad people can make bad governments. I looked up the etymology of the word “government” and found this explanation: “Origin: Old French. The word ‘government’ comes from the Old French term gouvernement, meaning ‘control, direction, administration.’ This, in turn, derives from the Latin gubernare, meaning ‘to direct, rule, guide,’ itself linked to the Greek word κυβερνάω (kybernāō), which means ‘to steer or pilot a ship.’”
If a captain were to guide a ship into danger, that person would not be a good captain. If a government leads its citizens into poverty, suffering, torture, or imprisonment, it is a bad government. I recently read a fictional story about a father who taught his daughter to steal and cheat. She learned those lessons well and eventually turned those skills back on her father. The moral is that one ultimately inherits the results of one’s behavior. In the story, the father received harm from the daughter he had taught to do harm. He sowed the wind and reaped what he had sown. As Scripture says: “whoever sows injustice will reap calamity” (Proverbs 22:8), and “…whatever one sows, that will he also reap” (Galatians 6:7).
As Jesus was on his way to Jerusalem, he took his disciples aside and told them “Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be given over to the chief priests and to the scribes, and they will condemn him to death and they will hand him over to the Gentiles.” (Mark 10:33) Jerusalem was the center of Jewish religious life, where one would expect to find the essence of goodness. The Temple was there, where people offered sacrifices, prayed, and teachers guided their pupils. Yet Jesus prophesied that it would become the center of a heinous crime: convicting an innocent man and sentencing him to death. Religious leaders—robed in authority, wielding power, and entrusted with guidance—would commit this ultimate betrayal.
There is no doubt that the Messiah would die as a propitiation for sin, but in this incident, there also seems to be a lesson: that which should be good and do good—Jerusalem—can become evil and do evil. Returning to the original idea: a government, whose purpose is to guide its people toward good, can instead become an instrument of harm, as Jerusalem illustrated. The lesson, then, is for governments to be good and do good, for individuals to be good and do good, and—most assuredly—for believers to be good and do good.
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