Parousia…Good Work

Pulling out of my parking spot, I turned on the radio and caught the conclusion of a program that discusses writing. The loquacious announcer droned on about the show’s sponsors, and then bade us listeners farewell by advising us, “Do good work.” Who could argue with that? No one I know has ever set out to do bad work.

But what constitutes good work? Is it determined by the work’s perceived service to humanity and our world? We might agree that nurses do good work. But not all nurses provide the same level of pain relief. Can you say, “Nurse Ratched?”

We could measure good work by the quality of job performance. A professional carpenter can frame a house far better than I can. But the job performance criterion breaks down quickly when we consider professions like slave trader, terrorist, or arms dealer. “Wow, Vito is the best hit man ever!”

Does good work amount to optimizing your intellectual capacity or earnings potential? That may seem reasonable, but it leaves us making arbitrary judgments about people, status, and career choices. Let’s say Sarah gives up a promising medical career to become an elementary school teacher. Is teaching and inspiring children less good than performing rhinoplasty? Moreover, who’s to say a doctor is inherently smarter than a teacher? Besides, can we really put a price tag on goodness?

And what if you don’t do good work? Or what if your disability prevents you from working? Or what if you’ve been conscripted into forced labor? Are you less of a person because your work isn’t so good?

Differentiating between good and bad is a human obsession. Consider all the good/bad judgments we make. Carrots are good, but seal blubber is bad. Mom-and-pop stores are good; international chains are bad. Vivaldi is good, and Vanilla Ice is bad. Homeopathy is good while synthetic medication is bad. Religion is good, and no religion is bad. My religion is good; yours is bad. Of course, someone might reverse all or some of those statements. This just illustrates how capricious our judgments are.

Our affinity for labeling things good or bad may stem from our formative childhood experiences. Parents instruct their children to be good little boys and girls. They punish scold their children for being bad. The school system reinforces our awareness of good and bad. Good students receive gold stars and bad ones are sent to the principal’s office. Good kids make the team, play in the band, and study hard. Bad kids get tattoos, smoke pot, and skip class. When we enter the work force, we advance up the corporate ladder if our superiors see us doing good work.

When religion enters the equation, things become more complicated — not to mention contradictory. The good work of prayer, piety, and penance appear to be essential to developing and maintaining an upright life. But then we’re told that that no one’s work is good enough. What a precarious quandary.

How are we supposed to gauge what is good and bad? The only suitable tool is knowledge. Yet the chimera of knowledge provides a pseudo-standard of goodness. Parents supposedly know what is good and pass that information to their children. So do teachers, supervisors, and pastors. These people in their roles share a feature that reinforces the knowledge-based economy: authority. Parents exercise authority over their children, teachers over students, bosses over employees, and priests over parishioners. The cycle validates itself as we blindly assume that someone got into their position of authority by knowing the difference between good and bad. So in the blink of an eye we’ve conflated authority with knowledge and knowledge with goodness.

Yet knowledge and authority aren’t the same things. The wisest person in the world may have no authority whatsoever, and the most powerful person may not be especially bright — or virtuous for than matter. Nonetheless, if knowledge really was power it still wouldn’t address the arbitrary nature of what we call goodness.

While in prison on trumped-up charges, sixth century philosopher Boethius wrote an allegory called The Consolation of Philosophy. In it, he wrestled with the issues of good and bad. “Is human judgment so perfect that it can discern who is truly good and who is truly evil? If that were true, why do humans disagree so often, so that the same person is thought by one group to deserve the highest rewards and is thought by another group to deserve the most miserable punishments? Even if I were to grant that some people can somehow distinguish between good and evil people, would that person also be able to look inside the soul and, like a doctor examining a body, discern the inner condition of the person?”

It doesn’t take an anthropologist to recognize that the gauges of good and bad vary depending on the contexts of culture, gender, historical period, religion, and family. Often, the standard for judging goodness boils down to individual taste. “This is good because I like it. That’s bad because I don’t like it.” We mask our personal preferences in the guise of tradition, success, age, experience, utility, gender, wealth, popularity, education, or a decree from on high. Yet taste is in the mouth of the beholder.

Regardless of the particular issue, most of us have developed a taste for judging between good and bad. We take pleasure in making those determinations. The sweetness of power, authority, and intellect tastes good. While it feeds our addiction to judging, the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge (of good and evil) sickens those who eat from it.

However, the Tree of Knowledge isn’t the only arboreal fruit-bearing plant. The Tree of Life yields fruit that heals the hearts of those who have ingested the venom from the Tree of Knowledge. The leaves of the Tree of Life bind the wounds caused by the divisiveness of judging good and evil. Its sap is the balm from Gilead. The tree of life blooms year-round — in the eternal now — so there is never a bad time to detox and heal from the harmful effects of what is falsely called knowledge.

The Tree of Life is the Tree of Love, and love needs neither the fertilizer of knowledge or goodness to thrive. Jesus instructed his students to love their neighbors. One man wanted to know what criteria made a person his neighbor. Jesus demonstrated the transcendent nature of love by showing that love doesn’t make that type of calculation. You don’t need to know if a person is good or bad in order to love them. That’s why Jesus could say, “Love God,” “Love your neighbor as yourself,” and “Love your enemy” with equal conviction and weight.

So stop doing good work and start loving. When you do, you’ll experience inner healing. You can begin by abandoning self-judgment. Rather than seeing if you measure up — which is just another way of saying “get better” — just love. In this way, you’ll experience God’s perfect work and you’ll witness the Tree of Love blooming in your heart.
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Originally published on June 9, 2008. (c) Presence International. Parousia is a free Transmillennial publication of Presence. To receive Parousia in your inbox each week click here.