Being Good Isn't All There Is

"Sometimes being good isn't all there is."

As a teacher of mine once said, "If you think salvation is a second chance at becoming a better person, you've missed the whole point." (Kerry MacRoberts)

If "being good" is the sole focus of your life, then you're not really living, are you?

This central motive of self-improvement is what I believe creates a church culture that "shoots its wounded."

When you are so focused on being better, you are in self-preservation mode. Your reasons for doing good deeds are not because you want to do the deeds, but because you want to be a better person, thus the deeds become obligations. The deed becomes a means to self-gain.

You can become so focused on being better, your reasons for making friends are not for enjoyment of those people, not for love of those people, but for their ability to adhere to the same morals and ultimately to help you do the same. These friendships are not true friendships. They become a means for self-improvement, and the "friend" is expendable. Once their behavior doesn't line up with what you believe to be helpful, or acceptable, you either try to "help" them (as in point out what they're doing wrong, thinking this will somehow fix the behavior. You convince yourself that you are doing this out of love), or if helping them doesn't work, you distance yourself from them (after all, "bad company corrupts good character"). You may still spend time with them for the purposes of hopefully being a good influence in their lives, but you no longer regard this person in the same way. This kind of self-improvement-focused person is difficult for me to be around.

Sure, we're attracted to people who make us better. It's not wrong to want that. We enjoy a person who brings out our best! And that factor plays a role in who we should choose to trust. But love comes first. People who love me because they genuinely enjoy my company and value me as a person, those are my friends. Love that comes from Christ naturally makes us better. And being a better person is merely a byproduct of our relationship with Christ, not the end goal.

This is what many churches do to drug addicts, to divorcees, to people who fail to behave well: they try to fix them and if they can't, they "turn them over to Satan." Now these people are further away from the friends they need to perhaps get through the divorce, or overcome the addiction. It's not accountability they need, it's love. They need empathy and understanding. Instead they are left with abandonment and often a hatred for the church, which translates into a hatred for God.

When I started to fail my ministry friends, what I got was a series of interventions (people reminding me of what I was doing wrong, which I already knew and hated myself for), which ultimately led me to feel worse about myself and fall deeper into the bad behavior. It caused me to distance myself from them. And they distanced themselves from me. I believed "being good" was the goal. This was what I taught in my own ministry. And then I suffered the consequences of that way of thinking. I was hurt and alone with no good friends around me to lean on when I needed them the most.

These are good people doing what they believe is right. I believe they've been taught wrong.

Outsiders of the church--those wounded or rejected by it--see the church as a social club whose conditions for membership is good behavior. This becomes their view of God. They think that in order to be accepted by God, they must meet certain behavioral requirements. We can sing "come as you are" all we want, but our actions speak louder than our words. Secular depictions of God always makes Him seem judgmental and condescending, don't you think? Sure we can blame that view on the Devil's lies, but he did it by lying to the Christians first. They are the ones who garnered this reputation.

Christians who are more passionate about righteousness (good behavior) than they are about people are not like Christ, but more like the Pharisees. Christ was passionate about people despite their sins. He hung out with the sinners. He spent time with the "unclean." He died so that sinners could go to heaven. Christ died to enable us to live free of sin. He doesn't want us to focus on good behavior. Christ couldn't stand it when the Pharisees were proud of their good behavior, because righteousness comes by faith, not by works.

So... If being good isn't all there is, what else there? There's having a relationship with the living God. That means trusting God, getting to to know Him, loving Him and enjoying Him, and loving and enjoying the people that He made. Sure there are right and wrong ways to do that (you're allowed to be picky about who your real friends are), but as we focus on Him, we begin to naturally desire the right things.

2 Corinthians 3:18 says, "And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord's glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit." We cannot transform ourselves into that image by our actions. He transforms us as we keep our focus on Him.

Even when we say, "a Christian's ultimate purpose is to love God and love others" do we really believe that? The proof is in our actions.