The antihero in movies has become so
prominent that people are now actually considering this antihero as
being good. For instance, the protagonists in OCEAN’S 11 played by
George Clooney, Brat Pitt and the rest of the new rat pack are nice, but
clearly they are not good. They lie, they cheat, and, of course, they
steal. They are the heroes, we are supposed to root for them, but too
often people say that, in OCEAN’S 11, good triumphs over evil.
An historical example which could bring this to great
clarity is that there was several years ago a friend of ours in his 90’s
who had been a translator at Yalta after World War II. In fact, at the
time, he was the only surviving translator at the Yalta Conference
between the United States, Great Britain and the Soviet Union. He
pointed out to me, as many people have, that Stalin, the Communist
leader of the Soviet Union, was very nice. People were taken (including
U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt) with Stalin’s winsome personality.
Meanwhile, Stalin was killing millions of his own Soviet citizens,
sometimes by his own hands. The British Prime Minister Winston
Churchill, on the other hand, was a curmudgeon who complained that FDR
was giving away too much to Stalin. Prime Minister Churchill looks
grumpy in the pictures from the Peace Conference, but Churchill tried to
be good, and his purpose was to protect democracy, freedom and the lives
of millions of individuals. In his attempt to be good, Churchill even
let go of most of the British Empire, which he found to be repugnant to
human rights. History has clearly re-evaluated both men.
Harry Potter is another example of a hero who is nice,
but who is not good. He disobeys rules and, instead of being rebuked for
them, is often rewarded. Frodo, the hero of LORD OF THE RINGS, makes
mistakes, but ultimately he tries to be good. Of course, another example
might be the last couple of presidents—some have been nice, but
definitely not good.
The bottom line, however, is that no one is ever truly
good. Far from it. That is why only in a personal relationship with
Jesus Christ, where the Holy Spirit is working in a man or woman’s life,
can a person be evaluated as truly good, and that is the rest of the
story.
DR. JOHN ANKERBERG'S RESPONSE TO CREATION QUESTIONS
Dr. John Ankerberg answers your
questions on creation in the following article available both as
a downloadable PDF and broken down into individual questions for
online reading. Click the link below to read:
