Goodness and Greatness
Friday, June 13th, 2008
Thirty-nine years ago, Neil Armstrong and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin brought the Apollo 11 mission to its climax. On July 20, 1969 two people, after traveling hundreds of thousands of miles, climbed out of a cramped multi-billion dollar box and walked on the moon. The moon! Roughly five hundred million people watched as this pair of Americans achieved one of the most significant propaganda victories of the Cold War, affirming the superiority of the free world over against its authoritarian enemies.
But as amazing as the moon landing was in terms of its political value, its most enduring legacy is a more general one: Apollo 11 bears witness to the power of human ability. The achievement was so overwhelming, so mythical in scope, that it clearly indicated that mankind, given enough money, technology, and will, can do virtually anything. As God is said to have remarked at Babel, “nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them.”
This limitless horizon of possibility has filled many with a sense of optimism, and with cause. Our march from the Stone Age to the modern day has been attended by meaningful advances in the human condition. Each year it seems that new medicines are developed, new communication arrays are installed, and more efficient agricultural techniques are unveiled making disease, isolation, and starvation ever more distant realities.
At the same time, though, the progress of human power has had a darker side as well. The very same theoretical and technological advances that have given us more cures, communications and corn have also given us germ-warfare, online child pornography, and the Holocaust. Thus, while our advances may fill us with hope, our hopes must be tempered with realism.
T.S. Eliot once wrote that modern people occupy themselves “dreaming of systems so perfect that no one will need to be good.” Sadly, these dreams must forever remain exactly that—mere dreams. For as history has shown, advances of all sorts are ambiguous things; great power can be used both for great good and for great evil; it’s up to the actor to decide which. Thus goodness will always be a needful thing.
This sobering truth—power’s inherent ambiguity—ought to cause us to examine our own lives then. Is the world a better place because of us? Are we using our ever-increasing wealth, talents, and influence to improve our communities? Or are we just using our fellow men and women as so much “raw material” for the satisfaction of our own selfish and destructive desires? Put simply, are we good?
A prophet once said, “the eyes of the LORD range throughout the earth to strengthen those whose hearts are fully committed to him.” (2 Chronicles 16:9) Now, commitment to the Lord involves a number of things, but a commitment to righteousness, to goodness, is among them. Thus, just as power needs righteousness so righteousness, it would seem, may lead to power. Let’s then keep this relationship between goodness and greatness in mind—both when we advance personally in some fashion and, perhaps, when we want to.