A Good Person? Really??

I had only seen a few minutes of the show before, and since Fox hyped it so much, I decided to watch "Moment of Truth" last night. This game show challenges its contestants to tell the truth about potentially embarrassing personal questions. As I understand it, before the game section of the show goes on air, they hook up the contestant to a polygraph machine and ask them a lot of questions, then record the results. On the air, the host then asks the contestant a series of 21 increasingly difficult questions that were selected from that group. On stage with the contestant they have friends and family members. To win the big money ($500,000), the contestant must answer all of the questions truthfully, as determined by the prior polygraph test. At any point in the game, the contestant may opt out and keep the money they have won up to that point; but if they ever give a "false" answer, they go home with nothing.

So last night's episode was touted as the one that wasn't supposed to air. The show's host appeared on stage alone to give a disclaimer about the episode before they aired it. If he had his way, they would not have shown the episode, he told us. The contestant was a woman who had been married for a couple of years. Her husband, parents, and brother and sister were on the stage with her.

In the course of the game, she answered truthfully that she had been fired from a previous job for stealing money. This was something she claimed to have dealt with and when asked whether she would steal again, if she knew she would not get caught, the polygraph said she answered truthfully that she would not. At another point she admitted that she had removed her wedding ring in order to appear unmarried when she was out with her friends.

Then came the questions about her relationship with her husband. I don't recall the order of these questions, but one question was whether she thought she might have been in love with another man on her wedding day. To her husband's surprise, she answered, "yes." The question they hyped so much on the commercials came from a surprise guest: her ex-boyfriend. He asked her, "If I wanted to get back together with you, would you leave your husband?" The woman looked terrified. The host looked to her husband and asked whether he wanted to use the one opportunity the family is given to avoid the current question. When he said he did not, the sister pushed the button to move things on to the next question. The sister said nobody needed to hear that answer. As the contestant made her way toward more and more prize money, the question came out, "Since you have been married, have you had sexual realtions with someone other than your husband." She admitted that she had and her husband looked devastated.

At several points in the show, the host nearly pleaded with the woman to stop and take the money. But she kept saying she wanted to continue and get the truth out. When he asked the husband, he said that she couldn't tell him anything worse at this point, so she might as well keep going. If I remember correctly, the question she had to answer to move up to $200,000 in prize money was, "Do you think you are a good person?" She said, "Yes." Her reasoning for her answer was that she had made a lot of changes for the better and she thought she was a good person. Really? You've admitted that you were in love with another man when you married your husband. You've admitted that you have pretended not to be married while out with your friends. You've admitted that you've been unfaithful to your husband. And at least your sister was afraid to hear your answer about whether you'd leave your husband to get back together with your ex-boyfriend. And you think you are a good person?

I find it interesting that the Bible does not very often call anyone a good person. It says that Joseph of Arimathea was a good man (Luke 23:50), and it says the same thing about Barnabas (Acts 11:22-24). But other than that, when it comes to saying specifically, "'so and so' is a good person," you don't really find it. But in our world today, it's easy to call someone a good person, regardless of what kind of life they live. Goodness must be judged according to the absolute standard of goodness: God. When the rich young ruler called Jesus, "Good teacher," Jesus said, "Why do you call Me good? No one is good but One, that is, God" (Matthew 19:17). How can anyone who lives contrary to God's standard of goodness be considered a good person?

We can be good people. We ought to strive to be good people. In fact, one of the qualities Paul used to define the "fruit of the Spirit" is "goodness" (Galatians 5:22). But we don't set the standard for our goodness. We can't compare ourselves with others around us and say, "Since I'm better than those people I must be a good person." We can't say, "Since this group of people like me and support me I must be a good person." Goodness begins in the heart and is demonstrated in actions. Jesus said, "A good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth good things, and an evil man out of the evil treasure brings forth evil things" (Matthew 12:35). When we learn to love the truth of God's Word, allow it to define the condition of our hearts, and live sincerely according to what it says, then we are good people.

So what happened with the woman on TV? She stood to win $200,000 for saying she thought she was a good person. Apparently, she couldn't even fool herself. The polygraph said her answer was "false." It seems that no matter how much she wanted to believe she was a good person, deep down inside she knew the truth.