Doing good, attributing goodness to oneself and pride: as I mentioned before doing the good (doing what pleases God) is mans highest pleasure. When someone engages in a good, selfless act, the individual enters a state of flow, a state of smoothness where doing the good act is easy. This smoothness can easily deceive us into attributing the good act to me, and thus identify with the good act. The smoothness is very deceiving--we viscerally experience happening it through our being that it is impossible for us to not attribute it to our doing. Even if we say with our mouth that we did not do the good, in a deeper layer we are saying that because I did the good, I am good. The good act then is wasted because it gets swallowed up in pride. How can we then do the good without being swallowed up in pride? Being conscious of the fact that were doing good is not good for it will result in striving and a lack of smoothness. It engages the flesh and love will be stifled for the flesh cannot love the other. However, being unconscious of the fact that were doing good is not good as well. We can achieve smoothness and flow out love but the end result is pride and attributing the naturalness of doing the good to ourselves after the fact. Christianity offers a way where we can do good a liminal space between conscious awareness and unconsciousness, a place where we can achieve naturalness but being conscious of the fact that God is the source of good. This is only a privilege that sons and daughters of God receive. There are some methods that God employs: 1) discipline. If we attribute the good to ourselves then he allows us to fall and to suffer to make us cognizant of the fact that we dont know what we do that we are wretched creatures without God. 2) God places impossible demands on us. The reason why we are to love the unlovable, give our money to His Work, pray for our enemies, die to ourselves, forgive those that offended us, embrace a call that is impossible for us, pick up our crosses and endure poverty and shame and suffering with contentment, is to make us realize that we cannot, with our own abilities, do these things. These things are higher order good and is separate from lower good which can be known as common human decency (loving those who are kind to you, being kind to people, etc.). What separates higher order good from lower order good is that higher order good requires the strength of God. 3) praying for empowerment and giving thanks after the fact. 1) and 2) often lead us to the mechanism of praying for empowerment and giving thanks. When we engage in higher order good then we pray to God and ask Him to act on our behalf. (The prayer must contain the passion of faith for it to be answered--there must be a pleading--there must be a strong reason to do the good--and an expectation that the good will be done for God is a God that desires to do good). In effect, the prayer gets answered, and goodness comes out of us naturally. God acted. But since it is easy to attribute the good to us--it came naturally out of me so I must be the source of good--we must regain ourselves and see things from a proper perspective: that God acted and I was merely a vessel. It is here where we thank God, in the secret parts of our heart, that He acted and did the good. In this way we practise doing the good with sheer flawlessness but with a sharp recognition that I did not do the good.
Posted on: Fri, 31 Jan 2014 12:21:50 +0000
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