We all go through life with the word good on our tongue. Good morning. Have a good journey! He's got a good reputation. These are good jeans to wear. Just taste! It's so good! Let us all hope for the good. Does it seem good to you? Wishing you a good whatever it may be.
What is good exactly? Does everything have good in it? Is our common good a real thing? Is your good and my good automatically the same? What if different people have opposite goods? I never asked myself those questions until one day.
It all started when my mom came home and said to us, "Let us celebrate the good news! I finally got that big promotion!"
"Good for you," answered my dad and looked down. That good news really happened to change everything about our family life. My mom was always preoccupied with her new job responsibilities, and our dad tried to fill the gap for everything else. Besides our daily school issues, laundry, dishes, cleaning, gardening, and fixing stuff, all the cooking responsibilities were imposed on him alone.
Certainly, the kitchen was not his domain. In fact, the food he was making didn't taste like much, but we all had to get used to it since there was nothing else available.
My little brothers were bouncing around the house, making noise, trilling, or simply messing around with each other. I also found an occupation for myself eventually. It was a computer game: "Treasure Hunting." In front of my computer screen, I didn't bother anyone. That virtual reality quickly became my primary life resource. Without it, I simply couldn't function. My thoughts and emotions were loaded with the images from the game.
One day my dad came from work especially burdened. He looked upon all the mess and yelled,
"This is insanity! I'm not a slave! Why do I have to care for everyone and tend to so many troubles, and you're simply hazing?"
He looked at me like he would tear me to pieces.
"If you think yourself to be the center of the world, you're dreaming! You should take most of the home responsibilities! I don't want to see you playing that stupid game anymore! Go clean the dishes, you idiot!"
"If I'm the one causing trouble here, I better leave!" And before he could do anything else, I made my way out like a torpedo, slamming the door behind me.
Outside was cold, dark, and damp. To warm up, I started walking without a sense of direction. Arriving at McDonald's, I stopped to look through the window. Oh! It smelled so good! I was cold and hungry. Suddenly I noticed two men going out of there and coming towards me.
"Hey buddy," said one of them with a mustache, "do you wanna hamburger?"
"I'm a vegetarian." I lied, remembering not to talk to strangers.
But they didn't go away.
"Then I want to treat you with a portion of chips," he suggested.
That offer sounded so good. The man came closer and continued.
"Maybe your mama told you not to talk to strangers. What's the problem? Let us introduce ourselves. My name is Mustache, and here is Fatty. See, we're not strangers anymore!"
Those potato chips tasted so good; the best was to dip them in ketchup!
"Vegetarian is good! Concluded Mustache, watching me consuming those chips. He turned to Fatty. "You should also go vegetarian. You eat way too many hamburgers. Look how fat you have become!"
He made me laugh and forget my troubles at home.
"Where are you headed, buddy?" Suddenly asked Mustache.
"I was just on a hiking trip." I lied again.
"Okay, but what are you doing when you're not hiking? What's your occupation in life?" He persisted.
"Treasure hunting." Little did I know that my cover-up story would take such an unexpected turn. Mustache looked at me as if I was already grown up. "You're just the right person for us. We are also in the treasure hunting business. We can offer you a partnership, well paying."
He treated me seriously, and it felt good.
I agreed, and events started to spin. All three of us got into a car, and a private jet was waiting for us when we finally stopped in a field. Mustache opened a door for me.
"You are in for a treasure hunting adventure!" He patted me on the back and added, "You will be my co-pilot. Your job would be to check the table, and Fatty will be our flight attendant."
We sat down in a small cockpit.
"Is everything all set?" asked Mustache.
"Yes, Sir!" I was immersed in the game completely. And it felt so good again.
After some time, we landed in another field. The nature around us looked very different, and I had no idea where we were.
"Now, do me a favor," said Mustache. "We need help loading all those sacs into the plane." And he pointed to a heap of oversized white packages nearby. "This is some special herb we're cultivating."
The rest of the events span out so fast that the fragments I remember are all blurry like some other guys arrived and tried to get those packages; fight, which blew up into a slaughter; three of us escaping in a big car; Mustache is driving.
I was so mixed up.
"It's not good to have the boy with us. We need to get rid of him." Said Fatty. To sink him would be the best solution, and he grabbed my shoulder.
"Don't touch the boy, you idiot!" Mustache yelled at him, and they started a fight inside a car. The car went off the road. It got terrible. Suddenly Mustache opened the door and pushed me out into a garbage dump, and they left me behind. The more I tried to climb on top of that dump, the deeper I sank into the filth. The stench was unbearable. I hit my head on a metal bar, and that's the last thing I remember.
"I see. You were lucky your landing was soft, " a policeman answered after my lengthy monolog.
He was sitting on the edge of the hospital bed. I was lying there with an IV dripping into my arm.
"Thanks for the story; it's enough to write a draft. I will come back in a couple of days to sign some forms."
"Wait a second! I urged him. "Am I a prisoner here? Why can't I go home? How long do I have to lay down here with this dropper in my arm?"
"I'm not a doctor. You were sinking in the filth; it absorbed your body and defiled you. Now it's time to take care of the problem. This liquid from the dropper will cleanse your body from that filth. You want to know how long: until all the dirt is washed away and you are clean again. It might take some time, but at least you got out alive."
"Where are they? Where is Mustache?" I yelled my questions to stop him from leaving.
"They both got crushed in that car shortly after Mustache pushed you out," he stated. "We know it's them because we compared the fingerprints. I will return when you feel better."
"How stupid! He asked me for a favor. I couldn’t have known." I uttered, coming out from the fog.
"And what if he would ask you to press a button that sends a deadly missile to destroy many people? Would you do him that favor too?" The policeman inquired suddenly. "You followed your own ideas of good, and they failed you. Everything can be good for some person somewhere, under some circumstances."
"But Mustache did all those things for me. He saved my life." I still couldn't accept what had happened.
"I'm sorry He didn't make it back on the road after a detour," said the policeman and sat on my bed one more time. "Let me explain it to you.
It might have sounded good, smelled, tasted, and felt good, but it didn't last because it was not real."
"Are you saying that anything good is just an illusion?" I interrupted him.
"Please be patient," he suggested, "especially that now you've got some time and don't need to rush anywhere. I meant that our Creator, the Almighty God, is good, and His goodness is an ever-lasting reality; that's a real treasure worthy to hunt. The road to that treasure is the way of truth, revealed in His Word. From the beginning, He purposed for all men to taste His goodness. But Adam, the first man He created, tasted from a forbidden fruit instead. As a result, a filthy nature of madness is imposed upon all of us who came after.
Remember your meeting at McDonald’s? You covered up your true story, and they did theirs. People do it everywhere constantly by sweeping some details under the carpet and plastering others. In the end, they present a created patchwork, where the actual reality is impossible to recognize; the truth ground together with a lie. Once you enter into a dirty game, it defiles you."
"What do you mean?" I surely was challenged by his explanation.
"This dirt distorts your ability to see. The spectrum range of your eyesight is altered, and your vision is blurred. In this condition, you cannot perceive clearly where you're going and what's happening around you. You are misled from the true and straight path and forced to take a detour. You go wandering off the road, trying to find your original path. You can only get your vision back through a cleansing process, drop by drop until all that filth leaves your being.
Because of that dirty nature, we all go into a detour from the original road, some of us into a short one and others longer, yet some folks never make it back on the road. Remember the journey from Egypt into the promised land? It took the children of Israel forty long years to get there. They obviously took a detour, and most of them never made it back. At one point, they were so close but didn't see clearly."
"I've heard that story. It's so sad. But is there any chance not to go into a detour?" I inquired.
"There is. Learn from your mistake and take heed to God's instructions. In His Word, He explains the safe itinerary to you before bad things happen, like before you find yourself in a garbage dump. Following His strategies, you cannot lose. To stay on track, you must develop a taste for His word and absorb it until it becomes your second nature. Only a real serious treasure hunter can follow the line." He concluded and got up to leave.
At that moment, I remembered my family and urged the policeman: "I need to make a phone call now!"
"That would be a good thing to do." He smiled and handed me his portable phone.
"Hello, Dad? It's me. Yes, I'm all right. I want to hunt a real treasure now and not play games anymore. I'll explain to you later when I get home. Please tell mom that I will need a few cooking lessons. See you soon!"