Buy the truth and sell it not.
Proverbs 23:23
There is a world of difference between a ‘good guy’ and a ‘good man’. One will get you drunk, make you laugh, and if really lucky, help you move. The other will irritate, humble, and inspire you. I know lots of ‘good guys’, I can count on one hand who is a ‘good man’.
Yet it seems the two have become almost synonymous. I am not sure if this is because of confusion or exhaustion. Are we unsure of what is a ‘good man’ because we lack a clear definition, or do we not care to be bothered learning the difference? This is a shame because whether it be superhero notions, a future spouse, or a honest mechanic, there is something in most of us that longs for the ‘good man’.
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For reasons I do not entirely understand, I am drawn to late 19th century British pastors. Men so utterly obscure today it is amazing I discovered them at all. And while they are preachers who proudly proclaimed the Gospel in their day, they are also men who clearly understood this notion of the ‘good man’. In his 1907 book, Great Texts of the Old Testament (a quite rare find) J.G Greenhough writes in a chapter called The Great Market, ‘the highest things are not marketable’ but says they still, ‘have to be bought, not with money, they are above price.’ At first blush this reads as a complete contradiction, but upon closer reading it actually gets us nearer to the root of our topic.
What is the price of a good man?
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Whether we know it or not, we live every moment of our lives in Greenhough’s ‘great market’, buying and selling. It is inescapable. Perhaps an illustration, albeit an embarrassing one, will help explain. Years ago, my daughter and I were in a big box computer outlet enjoying our convenience store coffees and walking the isles. Perusing through the maze of laptops and tablets, I set my 16oz caramel latte down for a closer look. As I reach over, my arm knocks 14oz of it onto the nearest keyboard. I could not have done a more thorough job had I tried. The computer was saturated and I was frozen in shock. In a blinding flash, I calculated the cost of this mistake (one my daughter warned me might happen just moments earlier). How would I explain to the Queen why I was coming home with a useless two-thousand-dollar caffeine-soaked laptop? I had no line item on the family budget for ‘Idiot’.
In that moment, life seemed to hang in the balance. My daughter stood wondering what I would do next. As if my instinct, I bolted for the exit while she desperately tried to keep up with my long galloping strides. Safe in my truck heading home, she thought the entire episode hilarious; I did not. My shame rose as the adrenaline fell. It was a complete moral and parental failure. There I stood, in the middle of Greenhough’s Great Market, and chose to sell the substance of my integrity for the passing shadow of my checkbook
Yet in the eyes of others the whole thing did little to change any perception of me being a ‘good guy’. Those with whom I share this story just laugh and still want to hang out. The Queen and our children do not love or respect me less. While my actions that day may not tarnish any ‘good guy’ image, can anyone sincerely argue they demonstrate the character of a ‘good man’?
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Here is where we find the heart of the matter and what Greenhough was getting at. The price of a ‘good man’ truly is above price, and far too often we are unwilling to pay the necessary freight, as I refused to that day. Yes, my bank account remained untouched, but what did I have to pay for it? When the cup tipped over the bargaining began - entirely within myself, were my principles and who I claimed to be were exchanged for having to avoid the consequences of my own actions. While most negotiations will be minor in comparison to the price of a MacBook Pro, more often the cost paid of truthful lips, an honest heart, or a clear conscience are steeper than might be expected.
This, I believe, is why so many feel a ‘good man’ is hard to find. I do not believe we have confused him with the ‘good guy’, when we stop and think we know the difference. Even as we claim truth to be subjective, there remains enough collective sanity to know a ‘good man’ when we see him.
If one thinks that I am making a mountain of a molehill, ask yourself this question, ‘would you rather your daughter marry the guy who bolted from the store, or the one who took responsibility for his mistake?
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Or if, as some believe, that the ‘good man’ has simply disappeared, perhaps we share in the blame for his absence. This time an illustration from literature might help make my point. In George Eliot’s classic novel, no one in the village of Raveloe expected Silas Marner to ever be anything other than what he ever was, an old hermit with a most endearing quality of keeping to himself. Yet, Silas did not need the friendship of neighbors. “So, year after year, Silas Marner had lived in this solitude, his guineas rising in the iron pot, and his life narrowing and hardening itself more and more into a mere pulsation of desire and satisfaction that had no relationship to any other being.”
But little Eppie did not know this. Abandoned and alone, she needed Silas to be something altogether different, demanding in him what others could or would not. “Unlike the gold which needed nothing, and must be worshipped in close-locked solicitude-which was hidden away in daylight, was deaf to song birds, and started to no human tones-Eppie was a creature of endless claims and ever-growing desires…and made him look for images of that time in the ties and charities that bound together families.”
No one thought or expected the recluse could ever assume the qualities needed to raise a child. How would someone so frightening and hard be both mother and father? In the end, Eppie expected and Silas became what she needed him to be – a ‘good man’.
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The price of a ‘good man’ is not just paid by that man, it costs everyone around him and the price can be no less high. If I had done that day in the computer store what a ‘good man’ ought to have, it would have cost the Queen equally. A ‘good man’ will routinely frustrate those he comes into contact. His principles and convictions are non-negotiable and the cost will often get passed on. Some will call him ‘inflexible’, ‘close-minded’, even ‘intolerant.’ When in reality his beliefs, that are the foundation of his perceived goodness, he will not trade for his convenience, novelty, or acceptance – or that of anyone else’s.
A ‘good man’ is intimidating. To be with him is to realize our own imperfections. In him we see just how far we have to go. But he is at the same time inspiring. A good man clears the way for others to see beyond themselves and believe they are capable of the same. So maybe that is the reason we cannot find a ‘good man’, we are not confused or exhausted–perhaps we just do not want to pay our part of the cost.
The ‘good man’ may well be on the edge of extinction, but he has not disappeared yet. He is still out there walking the alleys and corridors of the Great Market, going against the wisdom of Wall Street bankers by buying high and selling low the most enduring and precious things of life-always at the greatest cost and sacrifice. Because he understands, as we should,
That men may rise on stepping-stones
Of their dead selves to higher things.
Alfred Lord Tennyson