Posted on by Abe Austin

The Threat of Good People- Patterns Big and Small

Pattern of Hate)

I’ve spent the past two days discussing the tendency of those that feel wrong to try and tear down those that seem right. The reason for this is that the very existence of the holy is a testament against the impure. The holy prove that moral living is possible, and that it is better, which means that the immoral are worse and deserving of blame.

This pattern is nothing new. To his friends Jesus foretold, “If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you. If ye were of the world, the world would love his own: but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you,” (John 15:18-19).

To his enemies Jesus said, “Ye seek to kill me, because my word hath no place in you. Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning,” (John 8:37, 44).

The children of the devil seek to destroy Jesus and also hate those he has chosen. Thus, the impulse of the wicked to destroy the righteous is nothing more than an extension of the devil’s desire to destroy God.

Woven Through All)

This animosity isn’t just political, and it isn’t isolated to one instance. What we see in our private lives is but a fractal strand of a war that is cosmic and universal. There are branches of this struggle that are relatively low stakes, such as when the awkward child tries to tear down his more successful peer, but it is the same spirit behind it that would murder a God.

The immoral want to destroy the moral because evil wants to destroy good. Meanwhile the good, if they are truly good, emulate the God at their root and seek to redeem the wicked.

Just as these cosmic, eternal forces have fractal strands woven into our society, so too, there are strands woven into our own selves as well. There is an agent of evil within us that seeks to tear down our good parts, because those good parts remind us that there is a better version of us inside, and that we are not meeting our full potential. And there is that agent of good in us that seeks to redeem the evil part and raise it to its holy potential. As we learn to find the right solution within ourselves, we will learn how to find it in our society, and our society will join God in His solution for the entire universe.

We are all part of one cosmic ritual or another, and the outcome that we support in the eternities is echoed in the outcome we seek in ourselves.

Posted on by Abe Austin

The Threat of Good People- Justification for Evil

Yesterday I spoke about how children who are socially insecure can try to tear down those who are confident, because they hold up a mirror to the insecure children’s flaws. But as the years go by, what might be nothing more than teenage angst, gradually evolves into something deeper. Even, something evil.

Selfishness and Sin)

Most of us come into evil by simple selfishness. A neighbor is looking for help with some yardwork, and we discreetly make plans to be out of town that morning. Upon seeing a traffic lane slowing down, we might swerve into the next, cutting off the driver behind. We disparage the “other side” for their idiocy, enjoying the moral superiority that that brings. We want what they want, and we only deviate from our predetermined path when it serves our own interest.

And then, inevitably, that same selfishness leads to doing something objectively wrong. The commission of a mortal sin. Something truly damning, which far more than the teenage awkwardness discussed in yesterday’s post, is something that we tend to shrink from, to try and not face up to in our own heart.

And to soothe our conscience on the matter, we tell ourselves that everyone is “looking out for number one.” Everyone takes the advantage when it is presented to them. Everyone holds a grudge. Everyone is selfish. Everyone has a serious sin hidden inside. We become suspicious of those that appear to defy these universal assertions, assuming that the so-called good are really just hypocrites and liars, pretending to be holier-than-thou, but secretly just as selfish and compromised as the rest of us.

An Unbearable Reality)

Which then makes it very difficult when someone shows an undeniable act of kindness. When someone is doing good, even when they think no one else is looking. When someone is giving, with no possibility of return. When someone forgives another, even though they have every right to demand vengeance. When someone openly confesses and renounces their sins.

Moments like these threaten the wicked, because it holds up a mirror, showing us that we don’t have to be the way that we are. That person was willing to forgive his enemy, so why don’t I? That person gave with true charity, so why don’t I? That person admitted his sins and forsook them, so why don’t I? These questions remind the sinners that we do what we do because we choose to, not because it was inevitable. The sinners see what we really are, and how what we still cling to is inexcusable. We see that we are deserving of hell.

The good people therefore become hateful to us for no other reason than that they are sincerely good. They become an unbearable burden. They are a threat to the illusion that everyone is guilty, so we’re no worse than anyone else. They are a threat because they show us that change is necessary, but we are still unwilling to change.

Then, the good people have to be crushed so that there is no longer a standard to be measured against. Society redefines morality, so that even thinking or believing or speaking “incorrectly” is now deemed violence. Then the destruction of the good is considered justified and even called right.

Posted on by Abe Austin

The Threat of Good People- Awkward Children

Good people, by their very existence, provide an existential threat to the wicked. And I do not mean people that claim that they are good, or which assume the moral high ground, I mean those who genuinely live principles of goodness. People who are loving, who are humble, who willingly sacrifice, who show mercy and forgiveness, who every day try to be a better version of themselves. These are the best of people, but they are also the greatest of threats.

Not a threat in the sense that there is a risk of them attacking or harming others. Of all people, genuinely good people are clearly the safest. But they are a threat to the ego, a threat to illusion, a threat to those who are insecure.

Early Beginnings)

The pattern of insecure people feeling threatened by the successful and seeking to tear them down begins when we are still children. As children, we go through many awkward and insecure phases. Most of us care a lot about what others think of us. We crave attention. We become willing to do anything to gain the admiration of the opposite sex. Unfortunately, many of us meet abject failure in these arenas many times, and those failures hurt very, very much. What makes it all the worse, is seeing a peer who is cool, casual, and content. A peer who is not only more socially adept, but who also doesn’t care when he does commit a rare faux pas. The confident child becomes a mirror showing how awkward and warped we are in comparison, something that we desperately don’t want to see. So…we seek to break the mirror.

Today, I work with the youth in my church, and I see this age-old pattern still playing out. The most insecure children try to tear down the most secure. They mock and disparage, even become physically violent, all to try and drag the confident child beneath them. They would rather a world where no one was secure, where everyone was awkward, because at least that would mean that there was nothing wrong with them. Obviously, this is not the only pattern of childhood bullying, there are many other categories of perpetrators and targets, but from my observation this is one of the patterns that does emerge.

But if this pattern begins in us as children, how much further can it go in adulthood? How do things escalate when mere awkwardness is replaced with guilty and shameful behavior? When sin stands in stark contrast to the good and pure? When “being worse” means “being evil?” We will explore that aspect tomorrow.