I don’t want to be good

Tony D’Souza reflects on love and forgiveness

I don’t want to be good. It’s the trying I find difficult. Whenever I have tried to be good in the past it has never ended well. What’s worse, the more I try, the more I find myself tempted to give up and go back to not being good. The truth is I was never very good at being good.

Now imagine my delight to discover I never should have bothered in the first place. Quite simply, it’s not my job to be good. It’s not even required of me to try. Matthew’s gospel (5:43-48) explains it all:

You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbour and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven: for He makes His sun rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain to the just and the unjust.

For if you love those who love you, what reward have you? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet your brethren only, what do you do more than others? Do not even the tax collectors do so? Therefore you shall be perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect.

A lot of people (many of them esteemed clerics and theologians) claim that what Christ is asking of us here (and in the rest of the Sermon on the Mount) is impossible and we should not even attempt it. Some go so far as to say it may even be dangerous and certainly foolish to attempt it. But they are all missing the point. This is not a counsel for the conscious, rational mind. That is, it is not a counsel for the personality (or ego) of man, but is meant as a counsel of ‘that of God’ within us all. I believe it addresses (as does the entire Sermon) the spiritual dimension within man or the ‘Kingdom of God’.

Let’s look at the passage more closely. We are told that God makes his sun to rise on the evil and the good regardless, and sends rain to fall upon the just and the unjust in the same way. And we are told to love and to forgive just like the sun and the rain. That is, we are to love and forgive in a way that does not distinguish between good and evil. That means loving and forgiving without judgement.

The seed

Good and evil are both moral terms. They are evaluations or judgements, and as such they belong to the rational mind. The rational mind, while creating many good things, has also created a planet full of inequality and suffering. For example, the rational mind that produced penicillin also created the atom bomb. That is the point. In the world of things there is always duality (this includes the world of thought),  and there are always opposites: good and bad, love and hate. However, the goodness we are to practise is of a higher form. It is transcendental goodness.

This would not be a mystery to the early Quakers, whose primary revelation was of ‘the seed’ or ‘the Light’ of God within them. The seed bore fruit in them by convincing them of wrongdoing and, by so doing, changing them from within. The ‘seed’ or the ‘inner Light’ would then go on to conform them to itself. That is why George Fox and his early followers were willing to undergo all kinds of ill treatment and punishment gladly. They had discovered the ‘inner way’ and the process of this mystical inner way ended by the individual becoming like the Light itself.

To observe the letter of the law and to ignore its spirit is to be deluded by self-righteousness. This was the self-righteousness of the Pharisees (the old dispensation) and it is also the self-righteousness of all those who follow any form of law not derived from the inner ‘Source’ or from the inner rebirth. George Fox wrote ‘to believe only of Christ Jesus because the scriptures declare him’ was to be reduced to the level of a Pharisee, ‘but to believe in the Light, the Life that gave forth the Scriptures is seen, and Christ is believed in, and hence the believer hath witness in himself and comes to be a child of the Light.’

The love of God

When we go into the ‘secret place’ of the heart, we go into the spiritual realm. We go from the created to the uncreated, from the personal sense of self to the spiritual or eternal self and from the time-bound ego into the timeless ‘now’ or that which always ‘is’. Christ tells us that we are to be perfect by conforming ourselves to that. Nothing else will do. Advices & queries confirm this:

Take heed, dear Friends, to the promptings of love and truth in your hearts. Trust them as the leadings of God whose Light shows us our darkness and brings us new life.

The Love of God, which is within us all, is like the light of the sun because it shines on all, regardless who they are. It is like the rain, which rains on everyone regardless of who they are. This Light comes from the spiritual source within us and is completely apart from the created world. It has no opposite. It shines not of our power, but by the power of God. The sun shines not of its own will but gives light to all. Indeed, it has no other purpose than to give light to all, and we are to be like that. Goodness arises naturally as a result of the Light within us. There is no effort required. Here is Ann Docwra (1624-1710), an early Quaker:

The divine virtue must be in our selves. Since it is not in the power of man to put it into us, it is the gift of God in our own hearts, and is not to be denied or concealed.

Her statement is consistent with the gospels, where wisdom is manifested by the behaviour of all who receive her, and this is very much like one of the wisdom sayings from the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas:

The Kingdom is like a woman who was carrying a jar full of meal. While she was walking along the road, the handle of the jar broke and the meal spilled out behind her on the road. She did not know it. She had not noticed a problem. When she reached her house, she put the jar down and discovered it was empty.

Goodness happens. It is taken for granted as a result of the inner rebirth. It happens without our knowledge. Goodness brought about by our self-righteousness is always contrived. It trumpets its achievements sometimes even before they happen and invariably seeks reward in reputation or in kind. Our righteousness is ‘like filthy rags’.

So, it’s true. I don’t want to be good.

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