By Dina Aldabbagh

How do you destroy a perfect person? How do you take away blessings from someone who completely deserves it? You make them obsessed with being good. And you make them so afraid of being bad that the definition of bad slowly starts to contort and become stricter and stricter — making their conscience weak. 

A person could be everything. They could be every good thing. 

They could be kind, selfless, and generous. They could be constantly looking to help others. They could be constantly looking for opportunities to make others feel good. They could care about others deeply. Be genuinely interested in them. Seriously want the best for everybody, and wish to do whatever they can to bring that to pass.

They could be strong, and stand up for what is right. For themselves. For others. For principles. They could be willing to face punishment for something that they believe is right. They could be extremely just, and always pay others what they believe is owed. They could be able to withstand judgement or condemnation from others, and still be at peace. 

They could be so beautiful. Have a nice face. Fit body. Healthy habits and a body that reflects that. Muscle that is healthy and fat that is healthy. Their features could fit together so nicely. They could have a smile that disarms people. They could be inexplicably charming. They could always show up in elegant, ironed clothing. Their look can be the best first impression. 

They could be so wise, knowing how to adjust to each and every nuanced situation life hands them. They could understand with surgical accuracy when to speak and when to be silent, when to fight and when to be a lamb, when to give and when to hold back, or when to press forward and when to rest. They could have a perfect perspective on the world — a freeing one. A peaceful one. They could know how to deal with every kind of person. Or any kind of stage of life they’re in. 

They could work so hard, and not consider themselves above any work, but be willing to always humble themselves to the level of what needs to be done. They could be so ambitious. So dedicated. So clear on what they want and willing to work towards it, no matter how long or how much effort it takes. No matter how many times they must redirect. 

They could know how to be at peace, even when there is an obstacle, opposition, or adversity. They could be like medicine to all, always making situations better, less heavy. They could be lighthearted, taking very little seriously besides that which is genuinely important. 

And yet, that could all still not be enough. 

For being this kind of person means being the kind of person who gets all the good things. They get the good people in their life. They get generosity from others. They get good luck and miraculous opportunities. They get taken care of. They eat what they want, wear what they want, and travel where they want. They get from the world the best it has to offer. And they deserve every last bit of it. 

And yet, there is still a way to destroy this kind of person. With a person who is this connected to God and this equipped to thrive, there surprisingly still does stand a way to infect their mind: you make them so good that they are afraid to be bad. You make them constantly question if they are doing well enough in God’s eyes — or whatever moral code they live by — to deserve all the good that they are receiving. 

Sometimes, we can look at ourselves and know where we are genuinely not showing up correctly and need to fix. Other times, however — once you’ve gotten past a certain level of competence, wisdom, and guidance from God — a sort of obsession can form that puts a good person under their own microscope — looking for any small thing that might still need to be improved.

The issue is that under constant surveillance, this person develops chronic anxiety, wondering if there is any area that they are not living up to. And as such, anything that they’re doing that could take away their blessings. The desire to be good becomes the desire to be perfect, and it becomes a fixation. When we obsess over things, though, we often create problems that are not there. So then in the spiral, we do not leave things where they need to be left, and begin creating problems from nothing.

The obsession with being perfect before God means to always look to be more humble, more kind, more generous, more forgiving, less judgemental. But even something that sounds this good can get taken too far. 

You can get this person to question their God-given discernment because they don’t want to judge at all — and therefore are afraid to even take a stance. You can get them to allow any type of behavior to cross state lines into their life, since they are so forgiving, compassionate, and understanding. You can get them to stifle self-expression or lower their opinion of themselves too far, since they want to be humble. You can get them to stress over justifying every single purchase — even something they can absolutely, comfortably afford — since they want to steward their money well and honor God’s blessings to them.  

You can get their love for God and being good to become the mental cage that they turn over in time and time again. 

And it can work. Because God isn’t some voice from the clouds, and sometimes it’s harder to hear him say directly into your heart, “Stop stressing so much about it — this isn’t why I blessed you. I didn’t bless you to have you constantly worrying if you’re doing well enough to please me. I blessed you because you’re already enough.” And contrastingly, it can be hard to know that if a blessing ever stops, it wasn’t because you “messed up,” but maybe just because God is transitioning you into something else. 

Therefore, because we cannot hear God speak to us as a human being does, our consciences can become weak. They can be run by fear and instability, always worrying about what we must do to be better. To not mess up. To be more deserving. Our consciences — the way we typically understand God to be speaking to us — can become muddy water. We can confuse God’s voice with something much stricter — harsher. 

It can go so far that a person can do everything a human being could possibly handle on their own to be a good person, and yet still be living in distress that it’s not enough for God, or for goodness from the world. They can believe that somehow having opinions, buying something nice, or choosing to not perform relational closeness makes them a bad person. 

This isn’t a sustainable perspective to bring forward into the blessings God has for you. You can’t bring this guilt into the part of life where you’re getting everything you’ve asked God for. 

You can’t bring this into getting the perfect partner, the home you wished for, the career that you love, the bank account that frees you, or the essence of life that feels like heaven on earth. If you feel so undeserving of every good thing you have, you can never hold it. Because if the requirement you put on yourself to have good things is that you kill yourself working for it, or don’t speak up when something is bothering you, or stay close to people who make you feel bad just because you don’t want to hurt their feelings or reject them — then having good things isn’t a safe experience for you. 

If something requires you to constantly put your own wellbeing at risk, that’s not something you’ll keep in your life. Even if done subconsciously. 

My advice? Let yourself be a bad person. Not actually, but in a sense. Because sometimes, when you’re choosing to distance yourself from someone, or speaking up for yourself, or holding a boundary, or even simply having an opinion on someone — you may feel like a bad person. Even though you’re not, the experience of everything not being totally positive for you might make you feel like you are creating the negative. 

But sometimes that person kind of does just suck, and you don’t want to be around them. Sometimes a person has genuinely broken your trust, and you don’t feel warmth towards them anymore. Sometimes someone isn’t giving you what you deserve, and you need to say something about it.

None of that makes you a bad person — but if your standard for being “good” keeps raising the bar on being more humble, gracious, and forgiving, then you lose your own line of where your conscience genuinely needs to feel guilt. 

The effect is living under constant guilt — the exact thing God doesn’t want for us. Guilt is another opposite of peace. It’s the one that works on good people when they haven’t actually done anything wrong. 

Being a good person doesn’t mean never disappointing anyone, nor never disliking anyone. And, importantly, respecting someone doesn’t mean you have to respect who they are as a person, just that you give them decent, human respect. You can look at someone and be blown away by how low their morals are or how bad their behavior is, while not disrespecting them. Thus, feeling respect and giving respect are different things. One is an emotional experience and the other is a verb. You are not a bad person because you don’t respect someone, but rather if you don’t treat them with respect. 

This line, amongst many, begins to blur when you become too focused on being a good person. But being obsessed with being good is also egocentric, as you are always the center of your own focus. In turn, you start to lose a genuine sense of what each situation requires of you, because it is always filtered through the lens of being a good person, rather than doing what is wise. 

Perhaps humility is also in realizing you are a human being — who will disappoint, who will dislike, who will sometimes indulge too much. Because perhaps in those moments, when we feel the need to pathologize ourselves, humility is in taking that spotlight off of you, and remembering that you are just a normal human being.

God didn’t ask you to be perfect. Nor for you to earn everything he gives you. We can’t really earn the goodness of God because his goodness supersedes human ability. So perhaps humility is in recognizing that you don’t need to do more to even the score with God, and instead just humbly accept the goodness, knowing that nothing you do will ever be perfect enough to put you on an equal level.