“Good Day!” What Makes It Good? – Brad Jersak

Judging Good and Bad?

On any given day, life happens.

We face experiences that are difficult or uplifting.
And we feel feelings that are difficult or uplifting.

Unfortunately, many of us (or am I alone?) associate ‘difficult’ with ‘bad’ and ‘uplifting’ with good. That’s a judgment I want to interrogate…

Because the next impulse is to sort through our lives, expanding our judgments from good and bad experiences to:

  • good and bad days, weeks, years, and decades
  • good and bad people—individuals, groups, institutions, races, sexes
  • good me and bad me—the ‘myself’ I prop up, beat up, rationalize or condemn.

“I Need To” Feelings

These judgments often lead to resentments, which is a brand of lingering, simmering anger we replay rather than let go. I’m saying ‘we,’ but again, my confession my be unique. (Maybe not).

My judgements don’t just sit idly by. They generate a felt need. Or more specifically, a felt “I need to.” I feel the need to make what is bad into something good.

  • I need to fix it.
  • If I can’t fix it, I need to numb it.
  • I need to master it.
  • If I can’t master it, I need to run from it.
  • I need to manipulate it.
  • If can’t manipulate it, I need to justify it.
  • If all else fails, maybe I need to hide it or hide from it.

What I think is happening here is that I’m not accepting reality:

  • I’m not living life on life’s terms.
  • I’m not admitting I’m powerlessness.

“Serenity Now!”

In a sense, I have inverted the good old Serenity Prayer, leaving God out altogether and skipping straight to the pride and futility of self-will.

In the face of personal tragedy or social injustice, we may think we’re being courageous by saying, “I will NOT accept what I can’t change.” Oh, I get it, of course we should not judge tragedy or injustice as “acceptable.” But that’s not what the Serenity Prayer is saying at all:

God grant me the serenity [versus flailing]
to accept [the reality of] what I cannot [in fact, am powerless to] change,
the courage to [rise up and] change what I can [I can do hard things!],
and the wisdom [greater than my own] to know the difference.

I’ve mentioned Walter Thiessen’s helpful phrase before: “Compassionate Consent to Reality” which I find so helpful. Give his work a look, if you can. When life is difficult and feels impossible, what if we feel the feelings and offer ourselves and others compassion.

“It Is What It Is”

When Simone Weil coined the phrase, “It is what it is,” she wasn’t throwing her hands up in despair or setting aside our responsibility with a dismissive shrug. She was saying, in context, that she refused to call evil good or good evil. Those are wicked rationalizations.

She was saying, we must face reality as it is. And hard or difficulties not always ‘bad’ and what feels easy and uplifting is not always ‘good’—those are judgments, narratives, stories we tell ourselves about life that may even be the real source of our trauma or dysfunction. And what is hard or difficult may even turn out to be for our ‘good.’ Or so the apostles thought:

My brothers and sisters, whenever you face various trials, consider it all joy,because you know that the testing of your faith produces endurance. And let endurance complete its work, so that you may be complete and whole, lacking in nothing. —James 1:2-4

Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ,through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand, and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God.And not only that, but we also boast in our afflictions, knowing that affliction produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us. —Romans 5:1-5

“Save Me From the Time of Trial”

Easy for them to say. (No it wasn’t—James was stoned to death, Paul was beheaded). Well, I may not be afraid to die, but maiming? Meh. So, I’m quite happy not to rush into trials and afflictions, even it they’re for my good. I take comfort in these lines from the contemporary translation of the Lord’s Prayer.

Save us from the time of trial,
and deliver us from evil.

Sounds good to me. Jesus said to pray it, after all.

But when faced with trials and evil,

  • I will call them that. That was a trial. That was an evil.
  • I won’t judge my trials as ‘bad’ and I wont justify evils as ‘good.’
  • I’ll feel the feelings with compassionate acceptance of reality.
  • Bonus: I will call a cross a ‘cross’ and look for Christ, even and especially there.

May I still say, “Have a good day”? Yes, if a ‘good day’ is one where, despite trials and difficulties, we live in compassionate consent to reality. Thanks, Walt. And thank God.

Good Day!