The Picture of Goodness

Interfaith Celebration Gathering

According to Greek mythology, Diogenes searched the world for an honest man. Throughout the history of the Christian religion, 'good' people have been elected to sainthood, whereas in modern times, good people end up as subjects in made-for-tv-movies. But, what is goodness?

As a society, we have defined 'goodness' in and of itself as an admirable attribute. It is an attribute for which we have honored relatively few people, however. In order to reach sainthood, most humans have had to endure horrific pain, trials, or tribulations with unswerving faith in God. It seems there are no ordinary saints. And our society’s made-for-tv movies seem to honor depravity more so than goodness.

This historical reverence for and almost deification of a few select 'good' people, however, has led us as a society to undervalue, ignore, and be disconnected from our own goodness. We each come into this world filled with goodness and light. When we are born, we are so very connected with God’s gifts to us that we pay more attention to our guardian angels and our own inner light during our first few days on earth than we do even to our parents.

Contrary to popular belief, our goodness does not change as we learn and grow. Regardless of who we are, or what our behavior is like, we remain God's precious creations, one and all. Our behavior does not define who we are, even when our behavior is less than good.

We each have the capacity for bad behavior, behavior that is harmful or hurtful to others. Unfortunately, in many religions we have been taught to externalize the responsibility for our bad deeds by blaming them on ‘The Devil’ or ‘Satan’ as if this human-created being were responsible for our mistakes. Flip Wilson of comedic fame used to do a skit on his television show called ‘The Devil Made Me Do It!’ in which he would commit various outrageous acts and then grin his engaging grin and say “the devil made me do it!” No matter what results Flip Wilson’s actions caused, the ‘devil’ made him do it, so he was not responsible for his actions.

What a convenient way to abdicate the responsibility for our actions! Rather than acknowledging our own dark side (and we all have a dark side), we could instead blame some mythical entity for our bad deeds. Since, by blaming this entity for our misdeeds, we disavow all knowledge of our inner darkness and our potential for doing harmful things to others, we will have no reason to master our inner demons and grow beyond them. Learning and growing on Schoolhouse Earth is often painful, so we could avoid all that pain.

Or, could we? Blaming others for our character defects and our bad actions becomes a way for life for some of us. We rationalize that if they had not done what they did, we would not have done the bad things that we did. This way of thinking frees us from any guilt we might otherwise feel about our actions.

Unfortunately, blaming others for our own misdeeds often leads to other self-destructive behaviors. Judgmentalism usually goes along with blaming, as well as name calling and other negative behaviors. Since we cannot admit to ourselves that we have the capacity for bad behaviors, we become distanced from our real authentic selves. At this point, we cannot see the true goodness in ourselves. When we become distanced from ourselves, we also become distanced from God.

Nor can we see the goodness in others. Everyone else's behavior becomes suspect. When we fail to see the goodness in ourselves and others, we have no trust in others. We look for bad behavior in others, and we generally find it wherever we seek it. We look for fraud, deception, tricks, lies, and malice in everyone we meet, and guess what? We often find it, whether it actually exists of not. To each person with whom we come in contact, we hold up a picture of their presumed bad nature.

Bad behavior is not an inherent trait for most of us, but we each have the capacity for it. When we hold up a picture to others of how we expect them to act, many of them are only too happy to oblige us. After all, taking the easy way out involves doing the least we can for others, and not bothering to care about or help them. When we are faced with someone who expects us to take this route, some of us who are Card-carrying People Pleasers are hard-pressed to do otherwise.

Expecting negative behaviors from everyone we encounter also leads us to have tunnel vision. We see only what we expect to see regardless of what the reality around us is. In this way, we collaborate with our brothers and sisters to get the reality we expect. We like to be right, so we even sometimes subconsciously sabotage ourselves and our relationships so that our reality matches our expectations.

We need to learn to see and accept our own goodness, goodness that was put there by our Creator. But in order for us to see our goodness, we first have to admit to, own and embrace our dark side. No more blaming others for our actions or rationalizing and minimizing our bad deeds, we have to learn to take full responsibility for our behavior. In order to be able to do this we have to learn to accept that God loves us even when we do bad things, and that it is okay for us to still love ourselves when we do bad things.

In order to get to this point, we need to learn to differentiate between ourselves and our behavior. We are not synonymous with our behavior. Our behavior is not who we are, it is what we do. We are made in God’s image, so what we are is goodness, light and love. We need to learn to hold up the picture of our goodness to ourselves until we get reacquainted with ourselves.

Once we have connected with the goodness that is in each of us, we will have made the most profound connection with God that we can ever make. Once we see our own goodness, we will then be able to see the goodness in others. Knowing that we had to look past a lot of garbage in ourselves to find our goodness will lead us to make more of an effort to find it in others.

May God add a blessing to these humble words.

AMEN