What Does It Mean To Be a Good Person?

Here's a question that came up for me in my therapy journey. What DOES it mean to be a good person?

Because my background was Conservative Evangelical Christianity (CEC), this question was fraught with all sorts of problems. Let me begin by first explaining how I understood human nature to be, from that CEC prospective.

The theological story I was raised with said that we are all, as humans, totally depraved right from conception. That no one is good, no, not one. That is is literally impossible to be good based on the Bible and that 'sin nature' of humans is the regular state of all of humanity outside of salvation that comes only through the death of Jesus on the Cross and the subsequent individual choice to accept that 'atoning sacrifice'.

Therefore, I had no definition of human goodness. The only thing that made a person 'accepted' by God was that they were 'covered by the blood of the lamb', aka Jesus' blood.

This meant that when God looks at you, he sees only Jesus, and not the real you, the sinful you. The real you, the part that is dirty and sinful and inherently evil, is covered up by the only 'good' human ever to live, Jesus. In fact, God literally can't even look at you when you are in a state of raw 'sin'. If he did, he would lash out at you in wrathful judgement. Such a powerful concept!

Can see then that the idea of what it means to be a good person never even entered the equation for me? There were certainly various descriptors of what it means to be a 'good Christian', though these would vary depending on the sect you were a part of. But this was not equivalent to the idea of being a 'good person'.

Now, this is not the only way people who identify as Christians would explain it, but this is the way I understood it based on the teaching I received over the course of many years from a wide variety of Christian leaders.

As someone who strove to be a 'good Christian' with a high degree of fervency, I had a lifetime habit of 'good checking' myself (this wasn't even necessarily a conscious thing, it became automatic). In every event, interaction, choice, I was internally asking myself whether I was behaving in a 'good' way. If I hadn't that was cause to feel shame, regret and make herculean efforts to overcome that 'sinful' way of being.

Fast-forward to the deconstruction journey I've been on the last few years, where I've been unraveling all the toxic theology that I'd internalized, and where my therapist has been urging me to pursue the very foreign concept of self-compassion. I really struggled with this idea initially because the churches I was part of very deliberately teach directly against the idea. They don't necessarily use that language, but the most important concept of Christian living is to live in a way that wholly sacrifices the self to the 'will of God'. How a Christian understands the will of God determines to what extent they will ignore their own personal needs for the sake of the perceived 'godly response' to people and circumstances. That could be an article all it's own!

The most recent question my therapist asked me to explore was, what is the 'old story' I have told myself, around the idea of what it means to be a 'good person'. I was shocked to realize that I hadn't exactly ever asked myself that question. The whole concept was couched in being a 'good Christian'. And since I no longer identify with that label, how could I be good at all?

On considering the question more fully, I realized that the label of 'good person' is far too nuanced to give a concise definition to. I did give it my best shot and here is where I landed.

A good person is someone who desires to be, see and do 'good' in the world. This person hopes for the flourishing of humankind, the animal kingdom and the universe in a general sense. They don't wish to do harm in the universe. They may exhibit certain characteristics at least some of the time, such as kindness, empathy, love, etc. However, it's important to note that how these sorts of 'good characteristics' manifest in any given individual will vary based on what their personal life experience is. They may have trauma, indoctrination and various other things that dictate how they express their desire to see goodness in the world. 

Therefore, to put together a confining definition can end up causing harm. Perhaps it's more helpful to realize that all people are, at a core level good, but that all people end up manifesting some amount of harmful behaviors due to their own personal experiences, needs not being met, etc. For example, fear is often a major inhibitor to people manifesting goodness. And it can lead people to earnestly believe that they are manifesting goodness into the world when they are actually behaving in a harmful way.

In the end, I can only seek to recognize that there is goodness inside myself and inside of others and I can do my best to manifest my own goodness and to encourage the goodness in others. Self-compassion directs me to mostly mind my own business in regards to this. It's enough work for me, at any rate.

One thing I feel is true, beauty is good and most of us can agree on that.