Knowing the Good = Doing the Good?

No matter how many times I read and reread this article by Robert Coles, it never ceases to strike me in an odd way each time. I can't help but think that these are some of the most true words in existence. Despite Socrates' claim that "to know the good is to do the good," it seems that many times in 'real' life we are left with people who seem to know the good and yet refrain from doing it. There are only two logical causes for this effect: either they do not really know the good (that is, that knowing the good is something other than intellectual knowledge of the good), or that knowing the good isn't sufficient for doing the good. I am more inclined to pick the first of the two.

I was actually having a conversation with my friend earlier today; we were discussing bad eating/exercise habits. He said "I know eating this way is really bad for me, and I am fully aware of the consequences, but I just don't really care that much." I mean, the kid practically lives on a diet of pasta, butter, cheese, and all things deep-fried. His first statement is true. Eating that way is bad for him. His last statement is probably true as well. It's the middle statement that is questionable: "I am fully aware of the consequences..." I argued against him, saying that if he was really truly aware of the consequences, he would care more. I mean, we all wonder at the logical sanity of the person who carries around an oxygen tank yet still smokes a pack a day, but how is that different from our daily claims that we should eat less and exercise more? In each case, we claim we know what we are doing is bad, but we don't care enough to change it. I think we don't honestly believe in the bad-ness of what we are doing. If we did, we would change. Hindsight is 20/20 - and that's because once we are suffering the consequences of our actions, we truly KNOW that the action was actually bad for us. Prior to that, we didn't believe it enough to change it.

I think Christianity speaks prominently on this issue. For years, until I made a decisively immoral decision, I struggled with feeling like I needed God. I mean, those promiscuous drug-addicts and alcoholics, they needed God; but me? I was 14 and couldn't even squish a bug without feeling horrendous guilt. For all intents and purposes, I was a pretty morally-upright kid. I struggled with feeling like I needed God, because I didn't KNOW I needed him. I didn't KNOW that I was sinful. I didn't KNOW that I couldn't be good enough to please Him on my own. Once I made that decisively immoral decision, I KNEW that I was deeply, inherently sinful, and that I needed God - and I mean, I knew it in the deepest fibers of my being. And once I KNEW that I needed God, repentance was almost immediate. I finally knew the good, and so I acted upon it.

The Coles article resonates deeply within me, because I've also had that same struggle that the girl Coles talks about had. When I was in the 10th grade, living overseas, I went to a missionary boarding school. Instead of dorms, we lived in group-home style houses called 'hostels.' Every hostel had a girls' hall and a boys' hall, and a living area in the middle. We lived together like a big family, and even affectionately termed each other "hostel siblings". One of my best friends lived in my hostel with me, and he was the most obviously Christian guy I knew. All of the adults in the community respected him, he led worship, and went to Bible Study every day. One night, he tried to rape me. It took me years to get over that, and now I can talk about it, but it's made this topic of prime interest to me. How could this "upstanding, Christian" guy do something so HORRIBLE? The only logical answer is that he didn't actually KNOW the good. He had all the outward appearances of knowing the good, but inside of his soul, if he had known the deep badness of the action he attempted, he could not possibly have done it. He could only know the deep badness of the action he attempted if he knew the good; otherwise, there's nothing to contrast it with. He didn't know the good and so he didn't know the bad. So, it makes doing the bad a whole lot easier. If he had known the good, he would have known the badness of his behavior.

Likewise, the boy in question in Coles article didn't know the good. He had outward behaviors of knowing the good (good test scores, good grades, etc.) but he didn't know it in his soul. He didn't KNOW it in the deepest part of him. It didn't resonate with him. So, he knew it in his head, but he didn't know it in his soul. I think those two things are profoundly different. I can learn about what it's like to be homeless, but until I've been homeless I can't know it in my soul. By learning intellectually about homelessness, sympathy can be sparked within me, and I think that's like a shadow of actually knowing what homelessness is like, but it isn't the real thing. When we learn intellectually about the good, that knowledge can yield a sort of 'sympathy', if you will, and can give us a shadow of the good, but we can't truly KNOW the good through intellectual knowledge alone. It has to be something more?

So, how do we know the good? As a Christian, I believe that God reveals the good to me. If God is the good for which I am striving, then my relationship with Him is all about knowing Him, and consequently is about knowing the good. The more I know God, the more I will act according to His will, and the more I will act in a way that is pleasing to Him.

How do we know the good apart from God? I would answer that apart from God, there is no such thing.