‘There is none good but God’: The Challenge of Understanding and Living This Saying of Jesus

‘There is none good but God’. This is a hard saying for many people. I remember I used to not get what it meant, or how it worked, so I couldn’t really accept it. But now I can feel and sense the truth of it in my soul. It is a very good spiritual place to be. 

The world of course wants us to think the opposite, that we deserve all credit, and good comes from us. It is good and natural to give credit to others for good things done. This is a good and generous thing to do in that we want and need to know we are connected and useful in a good way to each other, but inwardly there is another level. This comes into play in our relationship with the Lord. We receive the desire to do good from Him, even perception itself is a reception from God. And instantly in this inward acknowledgement, there is an inflow of love and creative energy that magnifies our soul. (Like when the pregnant Mary met the pregnant Elizabeth and their body and souls in-flowed with love, joy and awareness). 

But it is important to describe this from practical experience so one gets a tangible understanding and feel for it.

      I work as a chaplain, and I work with doctors, nurses and CNA’s. There are times when people think we have all the answers. Because we have these positions people sometimes project on us their idea of what we do, whether it be good or bad. As chaplain people will sometimes think I have powers and abilities I don’t have. As an extreme example a couple of times, after saying a prayer, Catholic women took my hand and kissed it. This is from Catholic tradition, but really it’s an act of worship that only the Lord is worthy of. Now we can respond to this by taking the adulation or we can sense inside that that is not meant for me but the Lord. It felt strange and abhorrent to me to think it was for me. I think they did it in innocence, and for their sake I think its fine to accept because it is according to their faith, but I see it as being for God. 

In helping others we can guide, inform, empathize and listen, but the real answer has to come between them and God. This is what brings healing and transformation; there has to be a humbling to God. As people we can learn to trust, know and love each other and this serves as an agent of change and transformation, but there is a inner place in our core where God is there for everyone. He is the source and it is by his providence that transformation takes place. Only He knows our whole heart more than we do ourself, and he knows what is needed. It is a great privilege to be used by Him; He is the inner teacher.

    One develops a sense of radar where people are attributing something to oneself or others that actually belongs to God.

      All humans have hereditary evil and what comes from humans is at least potentially tainted with evil. What comes from God is only and truly good; it can always be trusted. When religion compels people to belief – it is not of God. One has to come to believe from within. Change has to come from the reciprocal relationship between one self and God. This is also greatly brought to light by those who seek answers from spirits or the spiritual in any way. In beseeching from the spiritual we should seek from God alone, not any angel or spirit. God is a divine human and we can seek, and we can know Him intimately as a Father, Mother, Friend, hero. That He is the divine human makes Him directly accessible. 

    It is nevertheless a challenge to actually accept and do this in life. I notice in examining my own pain, that a lot of the pain comes from other people. This often happens with people who are close to us, like our parents, family, partners etc. When they can’t face their own pain and problems, to cope they knowingly or not hide the pain, and, in doing so, cannot help but recruit others into not seeing it so that they don’t have to face it.  (Of course we can also do this to others, which is worse). I notice in myself how I took on a lot of this pain, and when it is not our own we cannot solve it, and I blame myself for it. This condition which is prevalent in most people is why the Lord said, “I come to bring division, a father will hate is his son, a mother her Daughter”.

     I bring this up because in place of it I have certain unconscious ‘salvation fantasies’, that are dissociative; they serve a purpose, but also serve to interfere with, or partially take the place the real source. For instance, today I went for a long hike in the rain, it was beautiful. I hiked in Tilden park which has lots of trails and trees. Walking in the wet, cold grass reminded me of living in the Azores where it was very green and rained a lot. This memory itself was part of a salvation fantasy – to be in a place where there was focus and happiness, but it is at least somewhat illusory, it is the past and not possible to recreate. These kind of thoughts are usually half-conscience at best but I was watching them to see what there purpose is. I also noticed I was motivated to hike toward a trial I had been to before where there is an ‘idyllic’ little creek in a deep forest. (These desires are partly true because heaven is idyllic with beautiful paradises). The fantasy partially came from a story I read called ‘All Gold Canyon’ in my youth (by Jack Schaefer). In the story the Author describes a beautiful valley in a canyon that is a little paradise. In the story, a good man, who is a prospector finds a huge vein of gold in a ditch at the heart of the canyon. As he is digging a man shows up behind him who has been tracking him with a gun and demands for him to hand over the gold.

This story is an allegory for what I am expressing, in that the fantasy, to the degree it is dissociative, is tracked and used by evil, usually to a degree far more than we realize, just as in the story the robber tracked the good man to use and abuse him. You can tell the false ‘salvation fantasies’ because they are only partially satisfying. This is because they are not from the core self, and so they are the true connection to God. They are not all bad; they are often developmental. There are also very good and constructive ‘Phantasies’; these are precursors, and developmental to knowing God, and they are how we work out problems and traumas in our mind and soul. These are different than dissociative fantasies in that one leads up and another down so to speak, and any one can serve partially for both ways. For instance, in childhood we believe in Santa Clause, and this is often a precursor to exercising the ability to have faith in a not seen, but benevolent God.