If it comes to a confrontation with Satan … I will grab
him by the throat and kill him.

God willing.

Ignore it long enough and God will leave you alone. In which case Satan may or may not care about subverting your goodness, since either way you’re his.

….your goodness is moot in the hereafter….

Precisely. For me, the hereafter is moot. Goodness
is to be measured in the here and now. That would be
a fine eulogy BTW.

Good is as good gets considering that there are none that are righteous, no not one. Our best are but filthy rags fit to be burned by an absolute God who created us.

So in this sphere of existence, yes you can be an exceedingly good man but if you’re not saved from God’s wrath, your goodness is moot in the hereafter.

The sticking point for you is not your goodness, but our raison d’etre. As long as you cannot reconcile yourself to a ubercreator or God, your goodness only counts for your eulogy – “Here lies Steel Turman, he was a good Mensch.” If that’s your position and you’re sticking to it, so be it.

On the other hand, having been a long-time cornerite, when was the last time you tested our claims against our Source?

who draws this line?

Is that relativism?

Christ was perfect, we are not. Jesus died that all may live eternally.

For that I thank Him, I accept Him, I honor Him with my life, and I thank Him for all that He has done and continues to do in my life.

As one of your faithful followers, I would be sorely disappointed to lose the ability to interact with you and your other readers, that the comments feature provides. There are only three blogs of the many I try to check out each day that I regularly comment on (yours, Dean Esmay’s, and Rosemary Esmay’s).

In addition, without comments, where would I get my daily dose of Beau? No matter how much some of the things your liberal commenters makes my blood boil, Beau can usually make me laugh about it.

Of course I could always resort to email, but then that leaves everyone else out of the discussion (at least during those times when I WANT everyone else in on the discussion)

Well said! You appear to be a good person to me.

I may be damned for not accepting your religion but that
does not make my ‘good’ less than yours.

Good is really just being GOOD and doing GOOD.

That you can differentiate between my goodness and yours is a bit troublesome. But not so much that I would negate
your good in favor of mine. Nope, I would say good is a
thing all should strive for without consideration to …
personal creed, color, religion or point of origin. In that,
I would ask you to look for something Jesus might have said
about good men. Maybe that there are good men but they may not be saved but for me and all that. THAT does not make those good men less good … only not saved.

There is always an inclination to try and brand something
in black and white, never more than in something as …
a religion. Right or wrong. Good or evil. Okay. But if I
were living the life of a ‘good man’ and did not espouse
your religion … how would you know I was not a believer?

How?

Is it incumbent upon my goodness to allay it to the feet
of your Christ at every turn, or to just be good?

Do I have to go to a place and share my goodness with
like thinking humans and praise to be … good?

Would that not take a very large piece of goodness out
of the world?

And what would be the result? More evil? And what purpose
does THAT serve in your realm? That I ‘believe’ and quote
scripture make my good more good? C’mon, surely, you can’t
hold that.

The good that I do, is the good that you do. We have …
different reasons or justifications for doing so. Simple.

I have been up against this argument before. I have always
found that religionists always go to some ‘faith and you
MUST believe as I’ thing. Sorry, I ain’t buying it. I may
be damned by your beliefs but I can still live a good life.

Goodness is a state of mind and heart. I’ll leave the …
soul searching aspects of it to you.

I happened on your site last week, and I greatly enjoy your blog, your writings, your opinions, and I share your faith. And I too am an independent conservative. I was registered as a Republican for the very first election that I could vote in, the 1972 contest between Nixon and McGovern, but in 1974 I re-registered as an independent with a small “i.”

One thing I’d like to read is your recounting of your journey from a political liberal to a conservative. Have you written about that before? If you have, can you point me to it? if you haven’t written about it before, how about you dashing off a few paragraphs to tell how it happened, when it happened, and what the experience has been like in making that journey? I’m assuming that it’s connected to your walk with Christ, and you have written about that, but I’d be interested in your telling it from a political point of view. Thanks, and keep up the good work,

Jay