No. You can't. If you do not want to be good, you will have to pick a different religion. Christianity is not for you.
Recently I heard someone say, "Everyone wants to be good," but I'm not sure I agree. I think most of us prefer satisfaction to goodness. More than anything, we want peace, pleasure, contentment, joy, happiness, and freedom from pain. If being good is compatible with those ends, we can endure it. If being good is a means to those ends, we can positively embrace it. But what if there is a conflict? What if there is a choice between goodness and satisfaction, and we find that we must sacrifice the one to gain the other?
Pastor Stuart Briscoe once asked a little girl, "If you could choose between being happy, being healthy, and being holy, which would you choose?" She said, "I know the answer is 'holy', but I'd really rather be happy." He delighted in her honesty, and thanked her for it.
If we would be as honest with ourselves as that girl was with Briscoe, we would admit that when happiness and holiness contend with each other for supremacy in our hearts, happiness often proves the stronger. Holiness - even the desire for holiness - seems to require a special measure of grace. But though our desire for holiness may be weak, we know that it ought to be strong. Like the little girl, we know what the right answer is.
The other night on Jimmy Kimmel six random men were interviewed and asked whether they had seen the stolen photos of nude celebrities that some hacker had made available. Five said that they had seen them, or planned to. A sixth said no, but his motive was unique. He had tried to take naked photos of his wife, but she had objected, saying that the pictures might become public. If he looked at the celebrity photos, he reasoned, it would justify her objection! Interesting man.
Before showing the video clip of these six interviews, Kimmel made a revealing comment. He said, concerning the photos, "There has been a lot of debate about whether it is even wrong to look at them. It is wrong, by the way..."
It is? It is actually, truly wrong to look at such things? I agree with Kimmel: it is wrong. But note how quickly that parenthetical acknowledgement of right behavior gave way to relieved guffaws as shameless men confessed their indulgence without guilt. Holiness is a hot coal that we may tap briefly, but then we withdraw our hand lest it start to burn.
Because the desire for goodness is rare, fleeting, easily suppressed, and easily confused with the desire to appear to be good, wherever we find a spark of that innocent yearning for goodness we must surround it with tinder, fan it into a flame, and stoke it desperately to keep it alive. Desire goodness. Want to be holy. Or, if you cannot go that far yet, then desire to want to be holy. Take that tiniest first step.
If you do not feel that you have within you a deep desire for goodness, may I try to awaken it in you? Try to imagine what it would be like if you were good. What would it be like if you were always honest, kind, selfless, gracious, pure, and diligent? What if you could respond to every challenge, loss, insult, pain, threat and disappointment with undaunted courage and perfect generosity of spirit? What if you could sympathize with those who suffer and always act in the wisest way to alleviate their pain? What if you could celebrate the happiness of others, and never feel the sting of jealousy or regret that their special joy would be a thing forever beyond your reach? What if you were perfectly reliable? What if you could be that utterly dependable fortress of character to whom the weak fly for refuge and encouragement?
Note that I did not say a word above about being happy, or being loved or respected, or having money or success. I am trying to see if you hunger and thirst (or at least are willing to try to hunger and thirst) for something Christians call "righteousness". Is goodness a delight for you all by itself, a thing to be treasured and hunted down and cherished for its own sake? Or have I only succeeded in provoking you - if somehow you have had the patience to read this far - to shrug your shoulders and say, "Uhh, I don't know. What good would goodness do me?"
Jesus said, "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled" (Matthew 5:6). If you would be good, come to Jesus, believe in him, and say a prayer to him asking for the grace to become his disciple. If you do not want to be good - or, if you think you are good enough already just as you are - then I'm afraid there is little Jesus can do for you. In the Bible, Jesus had an unnerving tendency to dismiss people who felt they were righteous enough without him.
