Reclaiming Good

While in the middle of creating, God looked upon what was unfinished and saw that it was good.

Words matter.  Both the words we use with others, and the words we use with ourselves matter a great deal.  Words frame and build the story of who we are...of who I am.  We must be mindful of the words we use, therefore.  Recently, I have been startled with the use of the word "good" in our culture today.

A couple of weeks ago, I was talking to a fellow clergyman, a colleague and friend.  He was sharing his struggle to find the energy to keep up ministry in the church.  He is nearing retirement age, he mused.  And he just didn't have the stamina and endurance he had when he was young.  His fear was was not doing an adequate job in his role as pastor.  This is not how he phrased it to himself, though.  He said, "I just want to be sure that I am doing an exceptional job, especially for these people at my congregation."  And in the very next breath he reiterated, "I don't want to be a piss-poor leader."  I understood exactly what he meant.  Right away, in my mind, I agreed with him.  I thought to myself, 'What a noble desire resides in the heart of this man, my friend!'  At first, I thought that that attitude was the one to have.  After all, we want to avoid laziness and mediocrity.  Then I thought again.

I noticed the words he used: "exceptional" and "piss-poor."
Then I noticed the words he didn't use.

The way he talked, it was clear to me that my friend saw nothing--no oasis or rest stop or ledge to fall on--between exceptional and piss-poor.  If you were not the former, you were the latter, just like that.

I shared with my friend the chasm I noticed between the words he used to describe himself and his work.  I pointed out that there are points between exceptional and piss-poor, and not all of those points are bad.  I said, "What's wrong with being good?"

Last week, in confirmation class with seven 7th-graders, we were hearing again the story of creation found in Genesis 1.  We talked about how, again and again while God was creating, God paused and remarked, "And it was good."  I asked the class: "What does 'good' mean?  If a teacher or a coach tells you that what you did was good, how would you feel?"  Here were the answers:

"Good means you did your very best, but you could have done better."
"Good means you didn't do it perfect."
"Good means you tried."
"Good means you should do better next time."

All of the responses were like this.  And my heart broke.
Then, I got angry at the injustice we have perpetrated upon our young people by teaching them a distorted and evil conception of the good.

In our culture, good is not good enough.  We are not satisfied with good, as God was satisfied with what God saw in creation--what God saw even in the first days of creation.  In fact, for us, today, good is bad.  How messed up is that?  And yet we teach this trash to our children.  And the problem is so advanced, the truth so distorted, that even when God says, "It is very good," their first reaction is, "...ah, well, maybe next time."

But good is good--great even.
There is nothing wrong with good.  Good is not bad.  Good is wonderful, in fact.  Good IS something to be proud of.  Good means, "Well Done."  Good is, and should be, satisfying.  Good is enough...more than enough.

Yes, we can always be 'better.'  And striving to improve is good.  So, how can we be satisfied with what we do and who we are, without becoming contented--for contented means that we do not seek anything more, that we stop trying.  Surely acknowledging the good does not entail such a slip into lethargy.  Can't "good" also encourage us to more when we recognize it as such?

How can we reclaim the concept of "Good"?  How can we develop a fuller (and more helpful) spectrum of (self-) assessment?  I believe we need to start teaching our children that there are more options than "exceptional" and "piss-poor."  Our productivity, our fruitfulness, depends upon it...and so does our joy.

For God, creation was not just good, not merely good.
God saw that it was good.
What's so wrong with that?