Recently I was impelled to ponder Jesus’ saying: “There is none good but one, that is, God.” This was his answer to a young man who addressed him as “Good Master” (see Matthew 19:16, 17). By attributing divine goodness to God alone, Jesus brought to light a common belief that goodness is only a matter of obedience to law. We can see this because although the man was already obeying the Ten Commandments, Jesus said (in another account of the incident), “Yet lackest thou one thing: sell all that thou hast, and distribute unto the poor” (Luke 18:22).
To me, that meant we should sell, or dispose of, a personal kind of goodness in order to see our true, unlimited spiritual goodness as God’s idea.
As an artist I gained approval from others by combining my individuality with my creative skills. This merely balanced my account as being good humanly. I did not feel satisfied by it, and learned that I had to sell “all that [I had]” for this higher sense of spiritual goodness.
