Divine Plagiarism

‘There is a difference between being nice and being good.’ I think it has almost become cliché. I suppose, though, something can’t really become cliché unless it is invoked often to describe something pretty common, and this nice/good confusion is pretty common. We Christians even spiritualize it, with our smiling paper Jesus holding a smiling little lamb affixed to our Sunday School flannel boards. I think we forget the purpose for that spotless lamb smiling at us from atop blue flannel. A nice man does not take that cute little baby lamb and slit its throat in order to atone for the sin of his family. A good man does.

It is far easier to be nice. People never really can get mad at you for being nice. Being good is another matter entirely. Just ask the other Lamb from the flannel board. He was more good than any man ever has been or ever will be, and He died for it. Jesus Christ is not the flannel board’s perfectly nice milquetoast teacher of platitudes. He is the perfectly holy and horribly bloody mess of The Passion of the Christ. A perfectly nice God does not send His Son to die the most cruel death imaginable. A perfectly good God does. Jesus did not come to teach us how to be nice to each other. He came to show us how to love. It is a hard lesson to learn, and a big change for someone who has already learned how to be nice. I speak from experience. God is patient in His teaching, even as I am slow in the learning.

One of my strengths and my weaknesses is my tendency to see most things in black and white. I am good ‘totally trusted friend,’ and ‘completely distrusted enemy,’ but not many of the flavors in between. This tendency is good as a soldier. It provides a clarity of purpose and a strength of resolve. It is not so good in real relationships with other broken people. I have been learning that there are things between absolute trust and total enmity. In the process, I am realizing that the hardest fights are not the ’to-the-death’ variety. It is far harder to fight personal fights with people who I really care about, the murkier fights of real relationships.

‘Learn to stand up for yourself.’ It sounds so after-school-special. Yet, it is a critical and often critically lacking relationship skill. Hence, we end up with a bunch of passive-aggressive nice guys who let their resentment build until one last provocation releases an earthquake. We should not just try harder to be nice. You can only put the earthquake off for so long. This cannot be the right answer. You need to get to the roots of the problem. In order to do so, you may need to confront someone you care about. This is the difference between being nice and being good. A nice man is concerned with everyone maintaining smiling faces at all cost. A good man is willing shed his own tears and those of his beloved in order to redeem their relationship. This is not license to manipulate or the control the other person, nor is it a release from kindness. A good man is kind to those he loves, for he feels their pain as his own. Yet he is willing to endure that pain in order to make things right. A good man respects his beloved as a person, and he respects their right to disagree. He chooses to fight fair, because he cares more about the relationship than about winning. Nonetheless, the good man confronts an issue rather than pretending through smiling teeth that everything is okay.

There is, of course, a story to this. Well, two. There was a two page story about a sideshow to the C story. It didn’t make the final cut. Here is a shorter and more relevant tale. My relationship with my mother had been fairly strained until about a year ago. Eldridge writes in Wild at Heart about sons of controlling mothers. They tend to either push their mothers away or they end up weak and compliant. I was the former: taking risks, fiercely independent, unwilling to let her in for the well-reasoned fear that she would try to take control of my life. The nice choice is to say simple pleasantries to maintain the modicum of civility. But that is not the good choice. If she was unwilling to let go, I would have to keep pushing her away. Because of that, she seemed to believe that I did not want a relationship with her. In reality, I did truly desire a healthy relationship with her, she is a wonderfully kind woman who loves Christ. If she learned to let go, then I could trust her with the things of my life. If there were problems between her and I now, they would surely intensify when I got married. The classic Mother-in-law/wife conflict is a usually the result of a mother unwilling to let go. I wanted her to love my future spouse, not view her as competition, and in order to do so she would have to learn to let me go. There would never be an easier time to fix things between myself and my mom. So I prayed about it, and picked up the phone.

I read her a page from Wild at Heart. I told her that I truly desired a close relationship with her, but I could not enter into one until she learned to let go. I told her that I wanted to work with her for that relationship, and that I could not do all the work myself. And I told her about my future priorities. ‘Mom, I love you, but if you cannot let go of the need to control, you are going to force me to choose between my future wife and you. And if you do force me to make that choice, I will choose her.’ I told my mother that I wanted to work on my relationship with her now so that would be a choice that we would never have to face. And this was where our relationship started growing: she started learning to let go, and I started learning to trust her. A year or so later, my current relationship with my mom is better (and healthier) than it ever has been, all by the grace of God.

Here is the big thing, especially for men. If we never choose goodness over niceness, we will fail those who trust us with their hearts. This is doubly true for those hardier fights with those you love. Consider the Parents v. Wife classic conflict. A dear friend’s mom keeps offering him and his wife ‘suggestions’ on how they may want to run their home. Suggestions not as in ‘did you ever think about this’ one a month. More like suggestions about how to be a good wife, suggestions all the time, even when they’ve graciously told her ‘Thank you, but no.‘ She is a kind and Godly woman, not a manipulative woman, so I don’t think that she understands that she is undermining his wife’s role and the independence of their home. He gets caught in the middle. He chooses correctly, standing up to his mom and defending his wife. Good on him. Many guys don’t. Many guys wince at the prospect of their mother getting her feelings hurt, so they run away and allow their wife’s feelings to get hurt instead. After all, a your mother has her own husband to run to for comfort (your father, for all of you who are doing the math.) Where will your wife turn for comfort if you run? A nice man runs from conflict. A good man does not enjoy conflict, but he is willing to face it for those who he loves. This starts with some good kindergarten-style ‘standing up for yourself.’ If a man avoids confrontation with those who hurt him, he will likely avoid confrontation with those who hurt those who he loves. And he will fail them. I would rather fail to be nice than fail those who I love.

I thank God for growing me in this way. In confronting the wrong, we honor those who we love. In ignoring it, we drift farther and farther from being real in our relationships. Love them, but love them enough to tell them what is wrong. Work for reconciliation, if possible, but do not settle for the stability of a stalemate. This is the difference between being nice and being good. The nice man avoids a fight at all costs. The good man tells his beloved that ‘I would rather fight with the real you than have a truce with a caricature.’