You Don't Have to be Good to be Loved
An alternate title for this journal entry: John Calvin really fucked up my shit
An evangelical story…
You’re four years-old. In Sunday School, your teacher tells you that God loves you so, so much. The way that you know that he loves you so much is that he sent his son to earth to die so that you could live in heaven with him forever. You picture heaven like a giant pillow fort but made out of clouds and with gold metal accents everywhere.
You’re in second grade. The pastor tells you during the children’s sermon that everyone (yes, everyone — your grandma, your teacher, your dad, your babysitter, YOU yourself) is bad inside, even if you can’t see it on the outside. You think of an apple with a brown and squishy rot surrounding its core, mushy and repellant in the very specific way that decaying things are.
You listen while your pastor, a man wearing a nice smile and a white buttoned shirt with the sleeves rolled up, tells you that you are tainted by evil — just as tainted as if you were a murderer. Because to God, all sins are equal.
This doesn’t make sense to you. To God, lying to your parents about how many popsicles you’ve had is just as bad as murder?
But your attention quickly returns to your pastor, crouching in front of the dozens of children sitting on the sanctuary steps. The deep-down, unfixable badness inside you is so offensive to God that even though he loves you very, very much, he would have had to send you to hell for eternity if Jesus hadn’t died on the cross to pay for your sins.
You’re ten years-old. The teacher at the christian school your parents send you to tells you that you’re a child of God, made in his very image.
You wonder what this means for you since God made his Real kid go die on a cross.
You’re in sixth grade. You learn more about your deep-down, unfixable badness. Your mom has a fondness for using the words “wickedness” and “depraved” to describe it. You’re so bad, so corrupted and vile at your core — just like the apple — that no matter how hard you tried, you could never be good enough for God to accept you. Behind the mask of your good deeds, your insides are so disgusting that it makes God sick.
You’re 16. In your high school religion class, you learn about predestination and “unconditional election.” Basically, you’re saved because God chose you to be one of the people Jesus got to save, “the elect.”
But if that was true, wouldn’t it mean that there are other people that God just… didn’t choose? And because he didn’t choose them, their deep-down, unfixable badness means that he would have to send them to hell, right?
Even though God still for sure really, really does love them just like he loves you. Because God is perfect, unconditional love.
You’re 18. You sneak your boyfriend over to sleep at your house while your parents are away. They catch you. You didn’t have sex but it doesn’t matter because the duplicity is just as bad as fornication and also evidence of your deep-down, unfixable badness. You are weak-willed, selfish, and cowardly. Repent.
You’re a junior in college. You just want people to like you (all the other students), be proud of you (your parents), and think you’re doing a good job (your professors). Despite working harder than you’ve ever worked in your life and staying up until 2:30 AM, buttressing your abilities with contraband adderall so you can study longer, you get a C+ in Organic Chemistry. No more pre-med for you.
You are bad, bad, bad. And also lazy and honestly maybe not as smart as you think you are.
You’re 25. Your mother makes it abundantly clear just how disappointed she is in you when you move in with Drew,* the man you’ve been dating for three years. She tells you that this is not what God wants for you. You are bad.
But a worse version of bad because now you’re slutty-bad on top of regular-bad.
You’re 30. You drop out of grad school and file for a divorce from Drew, mostly so you can stop feeling like you’re dying inside. The dying feeling was so strong that you temporarily don’t care if you’re making the deep-down, unfixable badness inside worse.
You just want to tell the truth. You just want to be free.
Your mom tells you that she and your dad will never support you, never allow you to move back in if you need somewhere to live, never loan you money. Because you are bad, bad, bad and so incredibly selfish, greedy, and unwise. How could this be the daughter they raised?
And on and on and on it goes until you’re 41 and you’re still trying to outrun that deep-down, unfixable badness inside you.
You’ll never get rid of it no matter what you do.
You see the proof of your repulsive and necrotic heart. Every time someone is upset with you, every time things don’t work out the way you’d hoped or planned, every time you face rejection, every time you don’t get the accolades that should follow a triumph.
If you grew up in the reformed tradition or evangelical culture more broadly, this story probably sounds awfully familiar. It’s my story, yes, but it’s more than just my story. It’s the story I’ve watched play out over and over again with my clients and friends.**
All because (often-well-meaning) adults planted a terrible seed inside their nervous systems when they were young and innocent and life hadn’t shattered their innate credulity yet.
Enter Banjo.
The other day, as I was vigorously rubbing his triceps and crooning “good boy, good boy, good boyyyyyy” at him, I had a thought: “Actually, he isn’t really a good boy.”
A small selection of Banjo’s transgressions:***
Expert level counter-surfing — he’s nabbed paper towel rolls, bags of Jimmy John’s, avocados, Chinese food, and lots more
Trash-tossing like he’s a paparazzi hunting for Britney’s Target receipts — except I’m pretty sure the paparazzi don’t eat the trash
Constant shoe and sock theft
Destruction of property — chewing a gigantic hole in the living room rug, shredding the upholstery on the ottoman, creating golf ball sized divots in the board & batten
Poop eating
Prolific hole-digging — to the extent our backyard looks like the lunar surface
Banjo is not, objectively speaking, a good boy.
But he is a kind boy, a funny + playful boy, a tolerant boy. He is unfailingly good-natured, affectionate, generous, and fully present in every moment.
What if all of those things matter so much more than goodness?
Am I irritated when I’m gently massaging mud out from in between his pads for the fourth time that day? A little, yeah. But Banjo’s kindness, mellowness, and the spirit of joy he approaches life with are so much more important to me than whether or not he’s “good."
I love him. So much.
I love him despite his lack of goodness.
My next thought: “What if you don’t have to be good to be loved?”
This is still a very new idea for me. And I am naturally suspicious of it — partly because it’s new and I’m still getting the feel of it. Rolling it around in my mouth like a jawbreaker, passing it back and forth between my hands like a beach stone, learning its rounded edges and soft dimples.
And partly I’m suspicious because it goes against everything I was taught for the first 25 years of my life.
But when I say it inside, in the quiet hollow of my own body — “what if you don’t have to be good to be loved?” — there is a flickering, a sigh of astonishment and delight, a sparkle of possibility.
So for now, sitting in curiosity with that little flicker feels like exactly what I should be doing.
FOOTNOTES:
* Name has been changed.
** If this is your story too, it would not surprise me at all if you ended up as an adult who: (1) Prioritizes obedience and compliance over your own success, happiness, or truth, (2) Is a chronic people-pleaser, (3) Can’t feel “good enough” or worthy of love unless you’re being useful or productive, (4) Is completely disconnected from the wisdom of your own heart. It doesn’t have to stay that way. Embodiment work can help — reach out if you have questions. ❤️
*** Yes, I’m aware that at just over a year old, Banjo is still very much a puppy and that lots of these things are either: (A) Normal adolescent dog behavior or (B) Our fault, not his.