You’re a Beautiful Person

Everybody has stuff they’re afraid of. Some people are afraid of the dark. Others of heights. Others of sharks. Others of spiders. Others of tight spaces, or being alone, or not finding “the one,” or being overweight, or something else.

My biggest fear? My most biggest, most exhausting, most terrible fear that haunts me every waking minute?

Being a bad person.

Nobody wants to be a bad person. Some people appear to be less worried about it than others. Sometimes that’s because someone is so insecure that they can’t even admit they have insecurities; less often it’s because someone has found wholeness and life and purpose in a genuine way. But I’m definitely not either of those people. I’m the guy who constantly sinks back into a panicked tailspin every time I do something wrong, hunted moment-by-moment by the endless fear that somehow I really am a bad person after all.

Why does it affect me so? I don’t know for sure. I could blame my upbringing. My parents loved me to death and didn’t always know how to express that love. They could be moralistic, they could have unrealistic expectations of me, they could be incredibly gracious as well. As all things in life usually are, my upbringing was a mixed bag.

I could blame society. Society at large still socializes us to think of each other in terms of “better than” and “less than,” which believe-it-or-not can cause an internal sense of shame that hides even in the psyches of people who see themselves as belonging to the “better than” category.

I could blame religion. I used to believe in a gospel that mixed law with grace. Salvation from hell was a free gift, but to be a “good person” and make God happy with me, I had to work at it. I had to succeed at a set of lofty ideals that I was never going to be dedicated enough to achieve. I eventually saw my thinking change, advocating strongly for a gospel of grace without law. It would have been great if I actually believed it. I still lived years of my life trapped in perfectionism. My verbiage had changed while my reality had only changed a little.

I could blame the Bible. I still have its platitudes engrained in my mind. The Bible taught me how to live in a state of never-ending cognitive dissonance. God loved me more than anyone else ever had or ever would; he also sent a global flood because he was sorry he even made humanity at all. He raised Lazarus to life; he had no problem with authorizing genocide against people who were in Israel’s way. Such wishy-washy thinking is one of the telltale signs of an abuser. An abuser never treats you like crap all the time; he showers you with blessings to endear you to him, then he torments you with accusations and criticisms and makes you believe you deserve them—that you’re a bad person, and he’s the good guy who “patiently” puts up with you. Any person (or book) who can get away with such terrible things is an abuser. Even the Bible verses that are supposed to speak life almost hurt when you consider the context of continual abuse in which they are spoken.

I could blame secular science. It has more or less taught us that we all came into the world on accident; we are nothing but matter, and we don’t matter. Any value we have is purely the value of a statistical improbability. But anything that wants to say we have no soul, no heart, and no agency leaves me feeling abused. Because I know better.

That’s the thing—many of us often wonder if we’re a bad person. On some level we all believe it, sometimes very deeply. But deep down inside—we know better. We know we have souls and we experience them every single day, yet we rationalize them away. We know that love doesn’t strike people with pestilence, yet we defend God’s biblical actions. We know that perfectionism kills us, yet we persist in perfecting it. We know all people are equal, and say as much, yet we continue to feed inequality. We know that our parents were hurtful, yet we keep pretending like we deserved it.

You don’t deserve abuse, neglect, or dismissal! You are a good person!

But how can I have the audacity to say that? Chances are I don’t know you personally. We’ve probably never met, never spoken to each other, or anything. I don’t know what you’ve done, what you believe, who you are—right?

Right—and wrong.

I don’t know who you are. Not if we haven’t met. I can’t claim such a thing until we’ve formed a relationship, and I’ve taken the time to get to know you, and we’ve found enough trust to open up our hearts to each other and show ourselves completely for who we are.

But…

I do have a heart, a very good heart, that I’m discovering how to engage. I meet other people and seek to understand them better, and have come to realize, becoming more convinced with time, that none of us are the completely depraved bad guys I used to believe in. We all have good hearts. We all have something wonderful to bring to the table. And we all have misplaced our hearts, have found ourselves living out of our pain and shame and trauma, and are still on our way to healing and recovery. Some of us can hobble around; others are still stuck in bed with a high fever. Some of us are unspeakably abused; some of us have been brainwashed into being unconscionable abusers. None of us are bad. We may do bad things, or have bad intentions on the surface. None of those things are a reflection of who we truly are.

Can I prove this? No. I haven’t met every human being the world has to offer. But I am convinced by love.

You can’t love bad people. You can do nice things for them, to prove yourself. You can’t love them.

Our definitions for love are way too small. We think it’s a fuzzy feeling you get for someone. You get married, the fuzzy feelings go away, you have some arguments, and you break up. Or we think love is about service. I can pay somebody a forty-percent tip, because I “love” them. I can hate your guts, and mow your grass for you and cook you dinner because I “love” you.

Love is not just a feeling or some stuff we do for people. Love is an all-consuming place we live in. Love teaches us how to treat ourselves and others with a level of compassion we didn’t think possible. Love is voluntary. It doesn’t do stuff to prove a point. It doesn’t do stuff to get something from others. It doesn’t do stuff to give something to others, either. It simply is, and expresses itself in some of the most wonderfully selfish and most beautifully selfless ways imaginable. It doesn’t worry about whether it’s doing the right thing or whether it’s a good enough person or whether the other person will approve. It does stuff for its own sake and for the sake of honoring the hearts it has fallen in love with. Good hearts.

Love doesn’t look at somebody and say, “Wow, that guy is evil to the core, but I still love him.” Love sees what is actually there—a good, beautiful heart! It uses the power of imagination to do it, which may make it seem questionable to some. And yet—love is always right. Not justifiable, or excusable, or right in the same way paying your taxes is right. But right in the same way that health and happiness and wholeness is right. Love reeks of rightness, the good kind of rightness that we have almost forgotten exists. Love tells you the truth—that you are a good person! Not a good enough person. A good person.

I need a reminder of that. Every. Single. Day. I spend so much time believing the lie that I am “less than.” I read into every interaction with others and try to determine if I did something wrong. Every time I ask if I’m a good person or not, the evidence always seems clear—I’m not. For I judge by the old strains of evidence—my failures, my actions, my priorities, my don’t-have-it-together-ness, my weirdness, my confusedness, the Bible (or what people say of it), science (or how people interpret it), moralistic thought, and the discouraging lies that pop into my head every day. These are terrible places to look for worth and value. So why look there? Because I’ve been lied to, and I think these are the “experts.” I think that my failures will give me a roadmap to being a “better person” (i.e. I’m not a good enough person today, i.e. I’m a bad person). I think that my goodness is determined by my deeds (it’s not). I think science will guide me into all truth (it won’t). I think the Bible still has authority over what I should believe (it doesn’t). I think being an unconfused person will make me a good person (a lie).

Our goodness is not something we need to seek evidence for any more than you need to seek evidence for the existence of the screen or paper you’re using to read this. It’s, quite literally, right in front of you. Take a moment to get out of the headspace you’re in right now. Interrupt all the thoughts you have. There’s something incredible about you being you! You being here! You being alive! Your heart being real, and oh so good! Take a deep breath. Sense the truth. You know it.

And yet, I fear you don’t. I fear I don’t. We know the truth about ourselves deep down inside our hearts. I’m convinced of that. But I’m not convinced we know how to access that yet. We’re all either on a trajectory of injury or a trajectory of healing. Sometimes we’re doing both at once, perhaps. But none of us have arrived. None of us are completely in touch with the truth. That’s not our fault. We’re not bad people for being unable to see. We just simply don’t see. And I have faith and pray that we will see someday, and in the meantime, catch glimpses now. Yes, just for a split second, can you see that you are so, so good?

You are good. You know it, and you don’t know it. You don’t always do good things. But you ARE good. Can we become comfortable with the paradox of this paragraph?

And yet, I say it to myself. I repeat it. I don’t feel good! I am a good person, but I feel a lot like a bad one! Shame still yells loudly, reminding me that I’m bad. Shame has been my close companion and special protector for many years. Protector? Why? Because somewhere inside, I still believe that admitting I’m bad will endear me to others.

After all, nobody likes the people who arrogantly recite their virtues to make us think they’re the best thing since sliced bread. We’re not further endeared to people who are boastful and proud; we’re put off by them! I don’t want to be one of those guys. So it’s much safer to keep being a “bad person.” On some level I actually want to believe I’m a bad person! People will be more apt to accept me if I’m a repentant sinner than if I stand up for myself as a good person. And if I really started thinking I was a good person, I might start worrying less about how my actions affect other people. I might be more careless and carefree, for better or for worse. That’s pretty scary.

I think this is where it’s important to realize that proud and haughty people don’t actually believe themselves to be good people. They actually hate themselves so much that they have to go around to everyone they know proving to them how good they really are. But if your goodness is something you have to prove, you are basing your goodness on something external to yourself. You are basing your goodness on a doctrine or a logical truism or a metric of virtues or accomplishments. Your goodness is intrinsic to who you are. It’s there just because. It’s not there because you’re tough or you’re smart or your kids are smart or your spouse is so awesome but so stubborn and thoughtless and doesn’t do what you say but you still put up with her or him because you’re a hero. Your goodness is true because you are a beautiful, amazing, unique, unprecedented heart learning how to cope with the pain and trauma of a broken, blinded universe.

But honestly, I don’t think it does people much good—if any—to tell them they’re a good person. Why? Because the very word “good” almost doesn’t mean anything anymore. It has been emptied of its power.

When people started seeing themselves as “good guys” and others as “bad guys,” that emptied goodness of some of its power.

When people started demanding goodness in their lives instead of inviting it, that emptied goodness of some of its power.

When people started seeking to protect their illusions of goodness, favoring pretense over truth, saying they were “doing good” and that it was a “good day” when their soul was actually dying inside, that emptied goodness of some of its power.

When people started using holy books, moral codes, legal systems, cultural norms, doctrines, ethics classes, and theologies to precisely define what being “good” should actually look like, that emptied goodness of some of its power.

When people turned “good” into an objective reality instead of a subjective one, that emptied goodness of some of its power.

Yes, goodness was meant to be a subjective reality. I’m not talking about moral relativism here. I’m talking about how we experience goodness.

When we make goodness an objective reality, we let goodness be defined by something external to ourselves. We let holy books, moral codes, legal systems, cultural norms, doctrines, ethics classes, and theologies decide what it means to be good. We are surrendering to someone or something else because we don’t have enough faith in our own ability to smell the difference between good and evil. And in many respects, that lack of faith in ourselves is justified. We live in an abusive world, and that’s what abuse does to you. It teaches you how not to trust yourself. It undermines the realities you experience and asks you to surrender to the beliefs and experiences of another. It takes away your gag reflex. Abusers wouldn’t get very far with you if you still had one of those.

But just as we have a gag reflex, I think we also have a love sniffer. We’re hardwired to know the difference between good and evil. I’d like to imagine that disowning such was Adam and Eve’s fatal mistake in the Genesis story. They decided to let a tree show them the difference between good and evil, instead of eating the fruit of their own hearts! They were promised some kind of secret knowledge, that was supposedly being kept from them by God. In actuality, they already had all the knowledge they needed. They didn’t need to look to any of the trees of the garden for that.

When we start to see goodness as a subjective reality, we are seeing it as it was meant to be seen. It was meant to be experienced! It was meant to be tasted and smelt! I can eat a bowl of ice cream, and say with confidence that it is good. I can get an upset stomach from eating too much ice cream, and say with confidence that the stomach ache is bad. Why is it that I can hear somebody tell me that God will send unbelievers to hell, and instead of saying with confidence that it’s bad, I hem and haul and try to invent excuses for why a good God might have a good reason to send people to hell? I disown my subjective experiences of goodness, disown my gag reflex and my love sniffer, and empty goodness of a bit more of its power.

I’m not by any means saying our subjective experiences are always right. The fuel gage in your car isn’t always right, either. It might be broken. But it’s there for a reason. If the fuel gage says empty, you still better check the tank. Most of the time, the fuel gage will be right.

And I’d like to think that as we continue to heal from abuse and trauma, and learn how to interpret our gag reflex and love sniffer, we will find it more reliable and trustworthy day-by-day.

So are you a good person? Yes! Absolutely yes! But I think it won’t do much good to tell you that specifically. I think it would be better to use a subjective word. You are a beautiful person!

Yes. I think we can speak volumes more to each other and ourselves by using subjective words. We can pick the ones that haven’t been marred by objectivity (i.e. surrendering our notions of goodness to an authority outside of ourselves). This is why I would much rather use words like beautiful, wonderful, gorgeous, incredible, awesome, amazing, super nice, fantastic, winderous (I made that one up), to describe how I feel about someone or something. I can say, “You’re a good person,” and people will nod their heads in agreement and still not really believe me. I can say, “You’re an incredible person,” and people will pause for a moment and take notice. Subjective words communicate value in a way that objective words do not. If I use a subjective word, it implies I am speaking of my own experience, and that’s what people yearn to know about. They want to connect with another human being and have shared experiences. They want to know that you believe them to be a wonderful person in the most honest way. They don’t want to know that they’re a good person according to some objective moral standard. That may temporarily inflate their ego, but it won’t make them feel loved.

As it turns out, we never really wanted to be “good people.” We wanted to be seen, known, accepted, and loved beyond measure. We wanted to be appreciated and cared for. We wanted to be trusted, we wanted relationship, we wanted connection. We wanted to be beautiful people, not just good ones!

So, in case nobody else tells you today, here’s your reminder. You are a beautiful person. A really beautiful person. You have no idea how incredibly “you” you are, but you’ll catch glimpses. I promise!

You’re a beautiful person! Take a breath, and enjoy that!

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