One of the games that my 4 yr old has recently started playing with me is 'goodies' and 'badies.' The rules of the game are quite simple: the goodies always win and the badies always loose (and I am nearly always the badie!)...
It is not something that we've ever really taught him so I find it fascinating how he has picked up this theme in the stories he has heard - picking up a basic plotline of our culture.
As we get older we find the world is not quite that simple - often the badies seem to win and the goodies seem to lose - apart from in the world of books and films where the convention still usually ends with a triumph for TEAM good.
Even the christian narrative can be boiled down to 'in the end' the goodies win and that can lead to a certain amount of arrogance in the 'rightness' of being on the winning side, indeed i have found it engenders a mentality where my winning involves others losing.
Of course the other part of the childhood narrative that continues is that when it comes to my life I remain the goodie - I don't look at myself and think i'm the badie, in my narrative I am the hero, the star, the centre - and the qualities of a good life are doing what it takes to make me happy as long as i don't really hurt anyone else. Badies them become those who are stopping me from being me, or even those who are not like me. One of the reasons I loved the image above is that it reminds me how easy it is to project onto another without ever having to stand in their shoes.
More complicated is my capacity inside me to be both a goodie and a badie - I can do things that are good for others and almost straigth away do things that only are only good for me at the expense of others - my individual human story replicated between groups, gangs, nations - our capacity to do great good and our amazing ability to them shoot ourselves in the foot by doing something stupedously bad/selfish.
It is one of the the things that attracts me to the Christian story and the life of following Jesus - the attraction of the great paradox - by giving up my life for a life in Jesus I get life and to intentiionally be part of the best of life, the generous, giving, helping others experience the good (not just be a goodie-two-shoes)...
This inner confrontation, challenge and change that I have found in my life of facing the insecurities, weaknesses and fears that drive me to be a badie at the expense of the people and planet around me. And in the reality of my weaknesses the encouragement to help others rather than just myself - surrounding myself with people who are in the same boat aware of our collective and individual capacity to get it so wrong (the church has had more than it's fair share of being the badie and will continue to do so) and to be honest and humble in the light of that realisation. But more being with a people intentional in encouraging each other in cooperating and working with God to do good, to bless and help others.
The excitement of not having to feel like a baddie, to be able to be forgiven and to ask for forgiveness, to be liberated from guilt and condemnation and a world of me first is a beautiful thing. But more it seems that in the practicing of doing good, in helping others, in following Jesus in the way of service and sacrafice is where we actually meet Jesus, where I am changed the most and reorientated towards goodness. When I withdraw from community, from spiritual practices, from giving and sharing I find myself also withdrawing into a world where once again I dominate and my orinetation and my being a goodie comes more often with strings of expectation of it being returned, about my self image that i'm not a badie and still the occasional moment where my capacitiy for unselfish goodness shines through...
What do you think 'being a goodie' means for christians? How do you practice being intentionally good? What do you find helps you and hinders you in this?
Good thoughts Paul.
One of the things we have been looking at this summer in our church community is the parables of the Kingdom. We look at some of them, and immediately see there is a distinction or separation between good and bad (eg the net or wheat & weeds. But what if we saw both the wheat and the weeds in each one of us? Both good and bad live together. But Jesus will come at the end of the age to root out the weeds ... in the meantime ...?
Richard Rohr (I think) says that one of the things that human beings need to learn is that they are not the center ... God is the center, we revolve around Him. Perhaps that is the getting close to defining what is bad or good; when we are the center or when God is at the center?
Posted by: Rupert Ward | 27 August 2007 at 10:19 AM
Thanks Rupert, that is a great thought - maybe in the meantime we continue to grow weeds and some of them get rooted out - maybe some of the space that was given over to weeds gets reclaimed and we find more good springing up in their space and maybe sometimes the weeds come back...
What do you think?
I like the idea of God being the centre altho it makes me wonder in whether it is more about orientation - towards the centre or away - in to my ways or God's ways
Posted by: Paul | 28 August 2007 at 11:51 AM