Your Goodness is Futile
Your Goodness is Futile
Are you a purist? I am kind of a purist. I am kind of a slave to “best.”
By nature I'm a fairly competitive person. There is a strong part of me that has to be the best, and I have to do things the best way there possibly is to do them. Left unchallenged, this standard puts me in a loop of striving and failing that will have me getting overwhelmed and super down on myself... because the simple truth that experience has taught me is that I will never be the best. I can exhaust myself and still never ever attain my stupidly high standards of "purity"and self-imposed shoulds. Even if I could attain them, I’ve found out something: every thing that I think is the “best” method or product or accomplishment or food or viewpoint has its own down side. Nothing exists that is 100% good, nothing on earth doesn’t have some kind of unintended consequences or negative ramifications.
Not a fluffin’ thing.
This is true in my standards and aspirations for myself; this is true in society’s standards and aspirations for itself. It applies to errrbody. There is no good any of us can do that doesn’t have a destructive fallout somewhere. Womp, womp.
It sounds pretty bad, doesn't it? Does this mean that good isn't being done? Of course not! Scads of good can be and is being done by all kinds of people in all kinds of places. I’d even suggest that this contraindication of goodness is not actually a “bad” thing, because it means there is no secret, guaranteed formula to perfection. We can’t try hard enough, love big enough, isolate enough, connect broadly enough, give up or acquire enough (knowledge or money or things) to find it.
Pure, unsullied “best” doesn’t exist, and no amount of striving can change that. The sooner we understand this, the sooner we can open ourselves up to grace and let ourselves off the hook.
But... this is a weird place to be. Should we just give up everything, then? What is life if we aren't striving for good – or at least better – and trying to avoid bad? What else could we strive for?
What interestink questions. Here are some ideas:
We can work on chilling the heck out. We can "strive to enter that rest,” like Paul says (a). We can focus on trust, because Somebody’s already got it figured out. We can focus on peace, because our need to control is always motivated by fear. We can focus on being aligned to God's standard, instead of focusing on subjection. By this I mean believing that what God says about Himself and us is the Truth, a belief which liberates us and others, instead of imposing our own unattainable standard of should on ourselves and others, which keeps us all imprisoned, fearful, and resentful.
Really, when it comes right down to it, we can’t live freely according to our own standards of good/best/perfection and evil/worst/imperfection. The goodness and badness are all tangled up with each other in maddeningly inconvenient ways, and we can't get away from one by striving to reach the other.
Here's my theory: the entire good-vs-bad paradigm is a false dichotomy. There's not actually an either-or going on here. Uncomfortable as it is, this is a both-and situation; a “let the wheat grow with the tares” and “all your good deeds are as filthy rags” situation (b), and I will tell you why, you lucky things, cuz I've got my sassy pants on today.
What we, by default, believe to be the standard of good and evil stems directly from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, way the heck back in the Garden of Eden. This standard we obtained from this tree misses the entire point of the Gospel, and distracts us with the idea that all that is good or evil is that way depending on how I relate to it. Think of these famous questions: "Did God really say...? Did God really mean...?"(c) I get to decide, I get to judge.
Unfortunately/fortunately, the more we experience of this world, the more we may come to realize that not only is there nothing good that is 100% good, the reverse is also true: there is no evil that can be 100% evil (d). This causes some major problems when using our "I am the one who knows and judges between good and evil" standard, because as it turns out, we reallllly don't know enough to make it all work, and taking on such responsibility runs us absolutely ragged.
Amazingly, there is something bigger that good and evil are both subject to, and because of that bigger thing, I am claiming that operating within the paradigm of the standard of “I decide what's good and evil,” is a sanctimonious, lifeless, futile trap. Yes, even if we tell ourselves that we're actually just concerned with what God says is good and evil. Mm-mm. Still a trap.
What?? How?
Because life and real justice are found in Christ, the fulfillment of all of God's promises. Because His judgment is fulfilled in Jesus' blood. Those concerned with justice and liberation will find themselves sprinkling (or flinging. As the Spirit leads.) those promises – that standard of who God says He is and who He says we are – farther and farther afield. Descriptive goodness, beauty, and joy everywhere.
Now, when I said "pure, unsullied 'best' doesn't exist..." I probably made someone indignant, or at least nervous. Of course Jesus is pure, unsullied best. The best ever. And He's not the best because He perfectly met and upheld that system of good-and-evil that we love to be enslaved to, the system which killed Him in spite of His perfectly attaining that standard (an example of the only justice that system has to offer – the equality of death for everybody). He brought "best" from somewhere completely outside of that system, and came in like an absolute wrecking ball and destroyed it.
Why?
Because God is good, but God is the standard, not goodness.
Because God is good, and it’s God who’s righteous, not the goodness.
Because God is good, and “good” is descriptive, not prescriptive.
Wonderfully enough, when He made us, God said that we were good, and the word was descriptive there, too. In Him we find kindness, generosity, freedom, and life outside of the sticky trap of "I decide what's good and evil." Lord knows there's no life to be found inside it.
a– Hebrews 4:11
b– Matthew 13:30; Isaiah 64:6
c- Genesis 3:1
d– Matthew 23, especially verses 27-28; Genesis 50:20
All the parts from the beginning:
Part 1: Prescription vs Description: Which is the Gospel?