Article 1 - "TOO MUCH GOODNESS AIN'T SO GOOD" March 2007 edition of First Church of The Streets

    Improving one's character can be an interesting avocation. Lots of people seem to be doing it, whether it is improving one's spiritual walk, getting to know one's inner child, losing weight to feel better about one's self, or developing an authentic self. A random glance at the bestseller list can show proof of this for example the latest diet book, the newest way to think fast in a changing world, the fastest way to get to know your higher power. Trying to improve yourself seems like a common way to fill up one's free time and feel good while doing it.

    However, is it possible to engage in too much of a good thing? In this case, is it possible to work on yourself too much, to become too wise, loving, or spiritual? Things that don't encompass all of one's life, such as exercise, eating, sleeping, or even doing good activities can seem to easily have a barometer that measures some kind of excess. But these are individual activities; it seems easy to say that one can get out of balance with an activity that isn't supposed to be taking up all of your time anyway. It would seem that wisdom, love and spirituality are intended to be aspects that encompass all of life, so could it be possible that one could try too hard to attain these attributes?

    Surprisingly, the book of Ecclesiastes seems to think so. The Bible, especially the Old Testament with its copious list of Levitical laws, seems to be the last place you would expect admonition against trying too hard to be good. But the Preacher seems to think that too much of a good thing, even if it is goodness, isn't such a good thing. After saying how he has observed how a good man dies even while being good and an evil man can live longer despite his wickedness (Eccl. 7:15, NKJV), he advises that one should "...not be overly righteous, nor be overly wise...", because "why should you destroy yourself?" (Eccl 7:16, both verses). From this, the Preacher seems to think that a person can wind up destroying himself with righteousness, which may seem somewhat strange. But maybe it isn't so strange as it may seem at first glance.

    Think of it this way: have you ever met a person who just seemed to be trying too hard? Maybe it was socially, in the sense that the person stretched so much that it was hard to relate to him or her. This person probably was trying so hard to fit in as to render himself or herself to seem like a chameleon or a cipher. After awhile, it seemed eerily like this person was changing roles so much that you didn't even know who was going to show up when you met this person: which persona today? Or maybe the person just came off like a liar, because the person's attempt to be all things to all people seemed to unrealistic and too false to really reflect any reality. Finally, since the person was in essence lying to insert himself or herself into all situations regardless of the culture or dynamic of the group, it was obvious to all the others of the group more familiar with the rules that this person was a poser who didn't know what he or she was doing, but pretending to do so. And all this was not because the person was trying to be deceptive. The person was just trying to be social and friendly. The problem was that this individual was trying too hard to be something that couldn't possibly be done, and the strain of his or her effort overshadowed the individual's good intentions.

    The same can be said for morality, and trying to live a whole and righteous life. One aftereffect of someone trying too hard to be righteous is somewhat familiar: this is the person that is constantly telling people what to do, dictating to all those around him or her about all the evils in the world. This is mostly just a hassle to those who have to hear it, and something that a fairly centered person can just tune out and go about his or her business while the "pastor" goes on and on about how the world should be. But this doesn't reflect much of what is going on in the amateur prophet's mind; and this is where the Prophet's admonition comes in. He is saying that a person who tries too hard is more than a divine pain in the butt. The person is actively destroying himself by trying too hard to be righteous.

    This kind of behavior can result in a variety of aberrant conditions. For one, a person may wind up being hung up in the statutes themselves rather why he or she is doing them. At first, this may not seem like a big deal. As long as someone is doing the right thing, what difference does it make that he or she isn't worrying about the why of it? Certainly, the outside effect of someone trying to affect the rules should be fine, at least for everyone else around him or her.

    However, this may not really be so true, either for the person or for those in his or her circles. If someone is only concerned about the rules without thinking about how they pertain for to him or her in any given situation, at the very least, this person can be hung up on extraneous details that are irrelevant or at least minuscule in the larger picture. An example might be a person is hung up on getting the right etiquette done in a business letter while ignoring the fact that a co-worker is being abused by a superior, or missing some kind of extortion or cooking the books going on right under his or her nose. This person hung up on a business letter may not have been deliberately neglectful of the immorality around him or her. Rather, in the search to be as good as he or she possibly could in all areas, this person instead wound up going down a huge detour into things that didn't really matter as much in the long run. Hence, following the rules in this case was dysfunctional for those around the person. And individually, the person, if aware at all of the chaos around him or her, may feel as though no matter what he or she does, there is no keeping up with it, so why bother?

    This last stipulation is what is most dangerous for the person who tries to be righteous all of the time no matter what, because he or she realizes on some level this is self-defeating. He or she will never be able to achieve a modicum of the perfection that he or she seeks. The person may find that trying to be all things wise in all things existing is like the proverbial plugging of the dam with one's fingers; as one hole is plugged, another one spurts out. Nothing seems to be really fixed. And after awhile, all this effort just seems to be useless. Because this person has been hung up on trying to do the right thing for the wrong reasons, when people don't respond positively to his or her efforts, when the world doesn't seem grateful, or when all the "stupid people" in the world aren't fixed because of all his or her good deeds, the person may give up trying at all. They may become the opposite of what he or she sought to be in the beginning. In a sense, people like these in the end have, like the Preacher said, "destroyed themselves" by trying so hard, and these people are now broken. The rigidity of this hard-working individual's wisdom has cracked, and now what remains has shattered on the ground, leaving a shell of a soul in its wake.

    Finally, a person who is hung up on covering all the bases loses sight of his or her soul in the scheme of things, because attention to rules only leads the person to forget how he or she fits into all of what is around these rules. Thus one loses sight of his or her own humanity, in a sense. This person then can be susceptible to being dominated by anyone who is looking for a sucker who is afraid of not being perfect. In that respect, one can drag this person in search of morality into a very immoral mess, as in the Milgram experiment where a person feels compelled to torture someone else because an authority figure said to do so. This renders his quest for wisdom null and void. Wisdom, he very thing that the person sought out to begin with has now slipped through his or her hands, like sand disappearing in the tides of waters going out.