How (Not) to Ruin Your Life

Here are five truly bad ideas guaranteed to make life hell:

1. God will only love me if I am good/perfect.
2. God will punish me if I am not good/perfect. 

I call these two ideas "The Heresy of the Evil God." The only way God could expect perfection is if He created it. Either I am perfect as He made me, or my imperfection is acceptable to him. God's love sustains my existance. It cannot be conditional.

3. Others will not love me if I am not good/perfect.
4. Nothing bad will happen to me if I am good/perfect.

Can you imagine how irritating it would be to live with someone who was truly perfect? Being imperfect does not make me less-than. It makes me one-of. Wanting to "be  good" can be a powerful positive force in my life, especially if it prevents me from doing things I will later regret. When I act on the desire to be good, I build my humanity and happiness.

If goodness is an end in itself, it becomes its own reward, but there is much that "being good" cannot do for me. It cannot make others love me, do things that are against their will, or stop random things, good and bad from happening. Nobody's life is perfect in the conventional sense. However, in the cosmic sense, our lives are all perfect. Trying to be good as way to have things go my way is a recipe for frustration and resentment. 

5. In order to be worthwhile, what I do must be perfect.

Ask your 5-year-old child if she'd rather have a birthday party where some things went wrong, or no birthday party at all. If she's at all honest, she'll vote for the first. The people in my life who matter are satisfied with my best, even when "perfect" is not part of the equation. 

The truth is that we don't know what perfect is, and our efforts to achieve it are bound to fail. That doesn't mean we don't do our best; it only means that our best is always good enough.

Pax vobiscum.