Sacred Cynicism

Bad, Bad Boy

I have to admit, there is some language in Christianity that strikes the modern ear as less than appealing. We live in the era of the self-help book, where we are to discover our very best, in 3 easy steps. We are always striving to improve our waistline, relationships, or investment income. We are conditioned to always look for the better way, and to think the very best of ourselves. Even our schools enshrine this thinking by promoting self-esteem, refusing to keep score in games, and even removing tag from the playground because someone has to be “it.” In the midst of all this positive thinking and expression, Christianity enters and starts using words like “forgiveness,” “redemption,” and “sin.”

It is at this point that many begin to pull back, and shy away. We don’t like to think that any of these apply to us. I am a good person, what do I need to be forgiven for? I have a good life and a nice house, what do I need to be redeemed from? Maybe I’m not perfect, but I’m not a bad person, so what does sin have to do with me? This is spot that many of us end up reverting to. I am not a bad person, so why apply any of this language to me?

What if I told you that Christianity is not out to tell you that you are a bad person? In fact the whole language of good vs. bad often ends up pointing us in a different direction than Christianity. Many of the people I know are, in fact, good people – even very good people. But it can often be our own sense of goodness that prevents us from understanding what Jesus Christ was proposing. Sometimes if we are convinced of our own goodness, we can selfishly act, or treat those we deem as not as good with contempt. There are numerous examples of this throughout the New Testament. The Pharisees were widely admired and very popular in Jesus’ day. Most people would have considered them “good,” yet Jesus said they missed the mark. In Galatians it was some leaders in the church who condemned Paul for reaching out to these new people. These leaders would have been looked at as good.

The language of the New Testament is not about good vs. bad, rather it describes, new vs old, light vs. dark, and death vs. life. In one famous passage from Philippians 3, Paul admits that he had kept every rule without fault. Yet even though he could claim that, something was missing. Paul looked upon his life of keeping every rule and pronounced it garbage. Like the Pharisees we can become so consumed with our own goodness that we can act out of a selfish pride created by our sense of self-righteousness. We can claim a certain external morality, yet still leave in our wake a number of people that we ignored, belittled, or went out of our way to avoid. It is this very tendency that the Parable of the Good Samaritan attacks. The two religious leaders avoided the beaten man in the road, because they were fearful interaction with the injured man would harm the sense of morality. So the question of Christianity is not, would you like to become good, it is, would you like to have life – the renewing life which the resurrection initiated?

So when I consider whether I am bad enough to need the good that Christ can give, maybe I will remember that this is not the question. Am I immersed in myself? Lost in pride and selfishness, do I miss the needs of those around me, and the good that can be done? Am I so satisfied in how I view the world, that I neglect to see the world through God’s eyes? Am I dead on the inside, even a little? Do I need to be infused with life? Many of us realize, and have been taught that we need to repent of the bad we have done. Next time we stop and pray, maybe we can take time to repent of how good we think we are, and realize that our sense of our own goodness can be the very thing that alienates us from God and each other. We may also realize that life is not mainly about good vs. bad, but distance, selfishness and pride vs. love.