In a religious class recently I listened to a woman say that when she messes up, she fears that people will no longer see a light in her being. Another man confirmed this would likely happen. He reasoned that his mom always seems to know when he’s making poor choices. There was a sense in the room that we were all on the verge of being stripped of our inner light.
I raised my hand, “What if when we’re
making good choices, we’re good? And when
we’re making bad choices, we’re still good?”
That
thought has been with me lately. Being
good has been the quest of my life. “I
just really want to be a good person,” I’ve told people. As those words came out of my mouth I felt
them, sometimes through tears. But honestly,
sometimes it verged into an obsessive quest, ruminating on my failures, wondering
if I truly am good. And then I asked myself, What if you don’t need to spend your life trying to be good? What if you already were?
It's such an interesting question. Are our works supposed to be a tally of good and bad and when our good works outweigh our bad works, we're a good person? I think that is an oversimplification. There is so much more involved and it's in our heart, in our words, in our intents, in our faith. But that's not to say that our actions don't matter, it's just more complicated than that.
ReplyDeleteOne of the parenting skills we learned was to avoid labeling our kids. "Good Boy" may seem like a nice thing to say but it becomes a label which pronounces a judgement. Then if he makes a poor choice the natural result is that he must be a "bad boy."
ReplyDeleteMaybe we should also avoid this labeling of ourselves in much the same way and just focus on striving to follow Christ and strive to make better choices without a making a final judgement on ourselves.