We are really bad at goodness.

For us, goodness goes badly a good portion of the time. We’re told by our parents to “be good” when they’re dropping us off at friend’s house, and whether or not they find out, we’ve usually behaved badly. At our work from time to time, we do a good job, but it never lasts — we have to do it again or things will go badly. It’s a constant struggle to stem the slippage from goodness toward the bad.

Even on the big screen, it never quite works out. None of the three main characters in the 1966 Sergio Leone film, “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly” are good. Sure, on the surface Clint Eastwood’s character is the “good,” but he’s good only by degree over Lee Van Cleef’s “bad” and Eli Wallach’s “ugly.” I won’t spoil it further if you haven’t seen it, but in the end, the only true “good” ends up being the movie itself.

Humans have an acute tendency to break bad, and a presidential election seems only to make it worse. When we think of political campaigns, we seldom think of the goodness that they bring — except the goodness of them being over at some point. Get-out-the-vote efforts resonate with impending urgency but are usually devoid of the classical values of the true, the good, and the beautiful.

But for Christians, goodness is not only the goal, it’s a promised fruit of the Holy Spirit’s work in our lives. The Apostle Paul lists goodness in Galatians 5:16-24 as the sixth item of the fruit produced by the Spirit. But if we are so bad, how in the world do we produce good fruit?

In Mark 10:17–18, Jesus comes face to face with a man who asks him about eternity:

“And as he was setting out on his journey, a man ran up and knelt before him and asked him, ‘Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?’ And Jesus said to him, ‘Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone.’”

What’s interesting about this interaction is that instead of immediately answering the man’s question, Jesus pivots and keys on the man calling him “good.” It’s not an insignificant pivot. Jesus is refocusing the man’s question from himself and what he has done, to something that is reserved for God. He’s not only making a statement about his own divinity (he doesn’t deny his goodness), but he’s also making a statement about the depravity of humanity due to sin. Jesus echoes Psalm 14, where David sings, “They have all turned aside; together they have become corrupt; there is none who does good, not even one.”

Goodness is a characteristic sourced from God alone, and from the beginning, goodness has come from him. We see in Genesis that, “…God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good.” We also see in the New Testament that God is still at work in producing goodness in his creation, as Paul reminds us in Romans 8:28: “And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.”

God works toward goodness for those called according to his purpose. Goodness, therefore, does not come from us. And that’s a good thing. Viewing goodness in that framework — that it is something given to us, not something that we produce on our own — is helpful in that it means that goodness is no longer in short supply. Goodness is not something that’s filtered through a person’s experience or through the latest polling data. It’s aligned with God’s purpose, and it’s free from corruption — qualities you don’t typically find in a campaign.

But that doesn’t mean that goodness cannot be seen in election season. Christians, above all, can display the goodness of God in every situation, including election season. We should take the goodness that’s grown in us by the Spirit and be a living contrast to what Paul calls “the works of the flesh.” But in order to do this, we must be led by the Spirit. And amid all the distraction and clamor of an election, there are endless competitors jostling to lead us away from the Spirit.

In Philippians 4:8, Paul tells believers that, “…whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.” This grouping of characteristics is the embodiment of Spirit-produced goodness. If we are led by him, our steps will be as David hoped for in Psalm 23, “Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life…”

And that’s not a bad way to live.

[Editor’s note: This is part six of the “Fruits in Season” series, exploring the impact of the biblical “fruit of the Spirit” (Galatians 5:16–24) on Christians during election season. Find the full series here.]