The Fruit of the Spirit by Thomas E. Trask

Author:Thomas E. Trask
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Thomas Nelson
Published: 2018-03-17T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 6

GOODNESS

Learning to Live Generously

The Southern California radio announcer kept listeners aware that a flower was about to bloom.

I thought, Why all this fuss over a flower? I love flowers, but announcing the blooming of a flower on the news seemed a little extreme.

But not for this flower! I’d never heard of anything like this before. The flower, native to Indonesia, was billed as the world’s largest and could grow more than six feet tall. It had bloomed previously only nine times in the twentieth century, and any day bloom number ten was about to appear. People flocked into Huntington Library’s Art Collections and Botanical Gardens to watch and smell. The expectation of many who enjoy smelling flowers may have been “the larger the flower the better the fragrance.” This flower, however, had the unusual distinction of being the world’s stinkiest. A vile scent is emitted when it fully blooms.

Claudia Puig reported on the giant flower in USA Today, “The flower is distantly related to the calla lily, but it looks more like something out of Little Shop of Horrors, It emits an odor that smells like rotting flesh, hence its Indonesian name bunga bangkai, or corpse flower,”1 Kathy Musical, the library’s plant collection curator, explained, “The fetid stench is to attract pollinators. It smells like a dead animal to attract dung beetles and carrion beetles. They crawl into the flower and pollinate it. Ain’t nature grand?”2

This flower reminds me of some people. Though they may appear bigger than life because of their financial success, societal status, material possessions, or educational development, when you get near them they surprise you by emitting a bad attitude, compromising lifestyle, or hardness toward others. What you discover when you begin to know them is different from what seems apparent at a distance. Their “stench” makes you want to run away from them as quickly as you can.

The fruit of the Spirit, on the other hand, has incredible drawing power. Though some of us believers may not be particularly attractive, these incredible, God-given attributes make people want to be around us. Whether we are tall, short, wide, thin, rich, poor, famous, or unknown, our godly fruit is a pleasant surprise to those around us.

WHO IS GOOD?

Good is the absence of defect or flaw and the presence of complete wholesomeness. Jesus said that only God is good. When Jesus was called “good teacher,” he responded by saying, “Why do you call me good? No one is good—except God alone” (Mark 10:17–18). Jesus was not denying his deity, but he quickly challenged the man to think about what he was saying, “Sir, do you understand what you are saying when you call me good? Because only God is good.”

Agathosune, the Greek word translated “goodness,” is a rare word that combines being good and doing good.3 It means kindness in actual manifestation, virtue equipped for action, a bountiful propensity both to will and do what is good, intrinsic goodness producing generosity, and godlike state or being.

Concerning goodness,

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