Why "Being Good" Isn't the Goal

At All Saints, we say we're a place for the curious, the burned out, the exhausted, and the pushed-aside. People who believe, people who doubt, people who are still seeking. That's not a slogan. It's just who shows up. But I want to name something that shows up too, and it's a little harder to talk about: how easily faith turns into a behavior plan.

Here's what I mean. Somewhere along the way, a lot of us start measuring our closeness to God by how well we're keeping it together. Did I read my Bible this week? Did I lose my temper with my kids? Did I say the right thing, avoid the wrong thing, show up where I was supposed to? Those aren't bad questions. But if they become the whole question, we've quietly swapped something out. We've traded relationship for management.

It's not because we're bad people trying to earn our way to God. Usually it's the opposite: we care, and we want proof that the caring is working. Rules give us that. You can tell whether you kept them. You can point to a chart, a streak, a track record. Love doesn't work like that. Loving someone well, patiently, without controlling the outcome is slow, and it's uncertain, and half the time you can't tell if it's working at all. So, we reach for what we can measure. Not because we've stopped believing in grace, but because grace is hard to hold onto when you can't see the results. Rules are just easier to hold.

The apostle Paul gets at something like this in Romans 1. His argument isn't that people need convincing God exists; it's that we already know, underneath everything, and we spend a lot of energy managing that knowledge instead of responding to it. I think the same thing happens with how we relate to God once we're already in the pews. We know we're loved. That knowledge is unsettling, because it means we're not in control of it. So, we build something we can control instead.

Here's the cost: when rule-keeping becomes the main event, we don't end up with people who are closer to God. We end up with people who are good at behaving for us. Those aren't the same thing, and the difference matters more than it sounds.

A kid who behaves because he's afraid of getting caught is not the same as a kid who's learned to trust his parents. A church full of people who've learned to perform is not the same as a church full of people who've met God. One produces compliance. The other produces communion. They can look identical from the outside for a while. But only one of them is alive.

None of this means grace is a license to stop caring how we live. It means the order matters. Love comes first. Behavior follows not as a performance we're managing, but as the natural shape of a life that's being led by something outside itself.

Practically, that might mean asking a different question this week. Instead of "did I do enough," try: "where have I been trying to manage my own growth instead of letting God actually lead?" Instead of holding someone else to a standard, ask what it would look like to walk with them toward God instead of just watching to see if they measure up. That's a harder move. It doesn't come with a checklist. But it's the one that gets you somewhere.
Believe what's true. Doubt what needs doubting. Keep seeking not a better set of rules, but Jesus.