Does Goodness Unite? (July 11, 2004)

Goodness is the great divider.

I thought about this theme when my son asked prayer for a friend whose parents are on the brink of separation. It is one of those cases where one partner is good and the other is evil. Here the husband is pleasant, mature and courteous, and the wife is foul-mouthed, hostile and (I think) under-medicated. She is insisting that he get out and leave her all the money.

Their troubled relationship illustrates what I have long regarded as a massive flaw in the marriage counseling industry: the assumption that, if you become a better husband or wife, it will make your spouse a kinder and better person too. This is not true. What is true (generally) is that if your spouse is already good, your goodness will delight him and make him better. If he is bad, your goodness will anger him and make him worse.

An under-appreciated teaching of Jesus is that his holy presence would generate discord rather than unity. He said, "Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to turn a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law - a man's enemies will be the members of his own household" (Matthew 10:34-36). This division was not purposeful, but a simple matter of fact. People's inclinations toward good or evil would snowball in opposite directions as they met Christ. His goodness would divide them.

Rather than acknowledge this painful truth, it seems to me that much of the Christian community chooses instead to fear that others will disapprove of them. “If they don't like us, we must be doing something wrong. Worse, if they don't like us, they won't become Christians!” That may be so, but don't worry about it. Do what is right, do what is pleasing to God, and let people respond this way or that however they may. Certainly it is good to be loved, but the goal of inspiring other people's love must never be allowed to trump the goal of doing right. Nazis and pedophiles and terrorists (and even some spouses) will never like us no matter what we do - or they may offer to keep us in their good graces only if we sacrifice the holiness that they find displeasing. We can't do that. We must simply remember that goodness divides, and ever will divide, and we must never regret any goodness that has met with either cool indifference or hostile opposition.

Martyred missionary Jim Elliot said it well when he wrote in one of his journals, "Let me not be a milepost on a single road: make me a fork, that men must turn one way or another on facing Christ in me."