Obsessing on being good means that we are centering our attention on something that God had never intended for us to know anything about in the first place, let alone focus on.
Most people understand that when Adam and Eve found out about sin from eating fruit off the tree of the knowledge of good and evil that they had done a “bad” thing. But this tree with the forbidden fruit was not just the tree of the knowledge of evil. It was the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. We were not supposed to know about good any more than we were supposed to know about evil.

In his book Ethics, Dietrich Bonhoeffer points out that being preoccupied with good and evil is abnormal for human beings. In the beginning, Adam and Eve knew only God. Good and evil were not an issue for them at all. In fact, Adam and Eve didn’t even know such concepts existed and God warned them not to find out. But Adam and Eve disobeyed.

With their discovery of the meaning of good and evil, they suddenly became “like God.” They had become originators of good and evil themselves. Before the Fall they did not have an identity apart from God. After the Fall, they had cut off their relationship with Him altogether.

As a consequence of Adam and Eve’s poor choice, we, their decedents, find ourselves similarly alienated from God. Instead of seeing God, we can only see ourselves. We were made in the image of God and drew our life entirely from our origin in God. Before the Fall we recognized ourselves as being chosen and loved by God. Our shame and sadness since Adam and Eve’s choice is a consequence of our estrangement from God. This estrangement can only be overcome through forgiveness and a restoration of fellowship with God through Jesus.

Bonhoeffer writes that “The freedom of Jesus is not about arbitrary choice of one amongst innumerable possibilities; it consists, on the contrary, precisely in the complete simplicity of his action…[which is] only by one thing. This one thing Jesus calls the will of God…The will of God is his life….He lives and acts not by the knowledge of good and evil but by the will of God. There is only one will of God. In it the origin is recovered…” (Ethics, pp. 33-34). Most importantly, in union with God there is no knowledge outside of God, there is no knowledge of good or evil, and there is no knowledge of evil toward us. “Knowledge of Jesus Christ implies ignorance of …[our] own good and evil…to the exclusion of all other knowledge” (Ethics, p. 43).

There’s a paradoxical passage that suggests we shouldn’t notice our good deeds at all: the left hand shouldn’t know what the right hand is doing (Matthew 6:3-4). How in the world would we pull that off?

By the reconciliation that comes through Christ.

Instead of thinking of good and bad, we simply focus on God. Ideally, in Christ, we are restored to the place of innocence that Adam and Eve had before they made their wrong choice. In Christ, God hits the reset button and we return to the factory original settings.

Bonhoeffer argues that no action we take should be intended to reflect back on us, our character, or our reputation. We must, for the sake of the moment, unreservedly surrender all self-directed wishes and desires. It is the other person who becomes the focus of all our attention. Not us. In ethical action, the left hand really must be unaware of what the right hand is doing if the right hand is to do anything ethical at all. Otherwise, our so-called good deeds become something else altogether: just a pat on our own backs. In fact, we generally do good only because it benefits us. It is hard to see that any true altruism—what might be called selfless action—exists in human affairs.

Bonhoeffer illustrates this notion of selfless action—true altruism—by contrasting the behavior of Jesus in the New Testament with that of the Pharisees. He writes that the Pharisee is someone for “whom only the knowledge of good and evil has come to be of importance.” Each moment of his life, the Pharisee chooses between what is good and what is evil (Ethics, p.30). Likewise, the Pharisee can confront no one without evaluating him in terms of his behavior, good or bad (Ethics, p.31). For the Pharisee, all judgments are moral judgments, and everyone teeters on the brink of condemnation.

Bonhoeffer points out that Jesus refused to see the world according to the black and white distinctions of the Pharisee. He threw away many of the legal distinctions the Pharisees worked so hard to maintain. Jesus let his disciples eat with unwashed hands. He healed a woman on the Sabbath, in violation of the prohibition of working on that day. Jesus exhibited a freedom from the law in everything he did and in fact never shied from tweaking the Pharisees notions of right and wrong.

Unlike the Pharisees, Jesus did not concern himself with the goodness or badness of those he helped. He did not care about the personal moral worth of those with whom he interacted. He cared only about the well being of those with whom he came in contact. He exhibited no other concern. He is the paradigm of selfless action, and the exact opposite of the Pharisees. For the Pharisee every gesture was fundamentally self-reflective. Jesus loved others, where the Pharisee loved only himself.

In one of his critical diatribes against the Pharisees, Jesus pointed out that tithing cumin and mint was fine, but one should not loose sight of the more important issue of love and mercy; doing the tithing without the love and mercy was the problem, not the tithing itself. The attitude behind the actions seems to matter to God.

Paul writes of the importance of love and argues in 1 Corinthians 13 that if we give all our money away, die for the faith, know everything, and have no love, then all we did was just so much empty noise. Shakespeare perhaps echoes this in the famous lines from his play Macbeth:

“Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more; it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing” (Shakespeare, Macbeth V,v, 17)

Dogs are very good “Christians.” No dog has ever gambled away its rent money, frequented a bar, used bad language, or smoked cigarettes. But of course, perhaps this illustrates that being good really isn’t what it’s all about, is it? Being good does not make a dog a Christian, now does it? Perhaps focusing on behavior misses the point completely?

Is love dependent on the actions of the one loved? The lover does not see his beloved as she is, but as love says she is. Love always hopes, always trusts, always perseveres, and so on. And so the lover sees his beloved as the ideal; she is always without blemish, always thin, always wrinkle free; the hair never grays, the body never sags. He loves each and every bit of her because it is hers. An ideal lover never sees his beloved any other way but as flawless. He cannot conceive that she can be anything but perfect. She is all that matters, and when she smiles at him and gives herself, then all other problems fade to insignificance. There is no fear, no sorrow, no suffering in the arms of the beloved.

A lot of what is promoted and preached is tantamount to adding to the gospel and is in a sense simple Gnosticism. “Well and good that you have the gospel; now you must add to that our hidden, special knowledge. You must do these things in order to really have the blessings of God, to open the floodgates of happiness, to gain the good things that God would like to give you if only you weren’t so bad or stupid.”

And yet we read that we have the kingdom of God now (Luke 17:21), that God has given us everything we need for life and godliness (2 Peter 1:3), and instead of choosing to enjoy that, we let the circumstances of our life distract us, robbing us of the joy we might otherwise experience.

Two children I saw in Disneyland once. One was holding his father’s hand, jumping up and down, looking at all the bright things around, laughing and happy, pointing at a horse walking by, and enjoying the moment. The other was holding her father’s hand, crying, and pointing at a cotton candy booth, miserable because her father wasn’t getting her any cotton candy. For both, their circumstances were actually the same. One chose to focus on the fact that he was in Disneyland. The other chose to focus on her lack of cotton candy. One chose to be happy. One chose to be miserable. They were both in Disneyland nevertheless. The only difference was their perspective.

Making your life as pleasant as possible, improving your circumstances, getting an education, learning to balance your checkbook, mowing your lawn, these are all good things to do. Just don’t imagine that they have anything to do with your relationship to God or that somehow in the doing of these “good” things, you can somehow get more of God or more of his blessings. How could that even be possible? You have the Holy Spirit living inside of you; you are a child of God; you will be with him forever. What more do you suppose there is?

The issue for so many Christians is the lists of do’s and don’ts in the Bible. They read that they must be filled with the spirit and avoid all sorts of evil: don’t gossip, don’t kill, don’t steal, be kind, don’t stare at Sheila and certainly don’t enjoy what you see, and whatever you do, stay away from that ice cream! And so they get the sense that if they aren’t doing these things and if they aren’t avoiding those things then Hell awaits them—or at the very least they will spend a lifetime sitting on God’s shelf as a vessel of dishonor.

But doing or not doing is like balancing our checkbook. Although it’s a really good idea, it never increases the amount of money in our account. We may have less trouble, our lives may be sweeter, we may be happier if we avoid killing our neighbor. And if we don’t drool over Sheila, then maybe her husband won’t beat us up and she won’t slap us silly. But it’s like knowing and obeying the laws of physics. Making allowance for gravity has nothing to do with whether you will make God love you more. But it’ll keep you from ruining that nice china tea set. Ethics are like that.

Why do we keep thinking that how we act is going to have anything to do with how much God loves us? Did Jesus die because we did something to deserve it? No, he did it because of his love for us; it had nothing to do with our ethics or lack thereof. It had nothing to do with begging or asking or faith. It had everything to do with God’s love for us and the price he paid on the cross.

See how easy this is?

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