In the course of traveling, over several days, I had to be with a very religious man who was a Bible scholar. He put me "down" by insults and in the same insult, he exalted himself.

"Look how little you are and how big I am."

He verbally assaulted me with subtle innuendoes that completely negated my work, my life, my manhood, my walk with God. Though the attack was subtle, the effects were blatant. I felt less than human, depreciated in my own eyes, believing God felt the same. I began to question my validity in every arena of my life. I was tempted to turn against my self, a being that God had created and saved. To hate my own self was to turn against Him as well.

And why?
Because Satan had whispered into my ear through this man who thought he was good. It was intimidation from Satan. The "good" believe they are higher than the Most High. They are actually in the enemy camp and assume they can say and think whatever they want in support of their superiority.

During that time I went out to do some errands and was mistreated by a store clerk. I overreacted to her offense against me. I was in the right but I realized as I left the store it was a spiritual issue.

The "good" man had infected me with his disease of belligerence and I was sick with it. I, his infectious carrier, spread his aggression into the world to destroy it with his unconfessed bitterness. I took it! I took his pent-up violence spewed on me, that I could not defend or take out on him. His assignment was to destroy the very creation of God. Go out and be violent and receive violence. Those around me reacted to the violence and returned it to me. I had been marked by the "dog" and the repulsive smell enraged people against me and me against them. It was Satan's plan. Born out of "good."

I had proved his point that I was spiritually inferior to him.

In superiority, "goodness" strikes at every person with condemnation. The "good" one has secret contemptuous thoughts which attack. Though they are secret and may be maintained in silence, they scream loudly and are heard.

The "good" man will challenge you to pick up goodness too. It becomes a duel and the challenger measures your goodness by a slide rule and it slides upon his opinion only. He will never let YOU be good. The meter stick is always raised higher and higher so that the "challenger" is always more good than you.

Now I have to prove my own goodness and worth in a duel.
Only pride will accept the challenge of a duel. "Which of us is better, more good?"

With lashes of condemnation, the one waving his own "goodness" will rail and beat me down with superiority and tempt me to turn my face from my Good God and place my faith in an illusion of the goodness of man. And my own goodness.

The obvious choices are to (1) defend my goodness and attack and try to out-good him. Or (2) lose my self in cowardice of silence which is his real command. Either response is pride. If I fight back it is pride and if I bow to his estimation, that too is pride. One is the pride of superiority. The other the pride of inferiority.

Either way he wins.

It's a duel you CAN'T win. The opponent won't let you. You are left as a bloody corpse you look and say, "Oh, I've just been bludgeoned and I didn't see the instrument that hit me."

It blind sides me and leaves my soul shredded. Because the facade was "goodness" I never saw it coming. All of a sudden you have all these pieces to pick up and you have lost your self. You have been cremated by superiority.

Goodness is a harsh taskmaster. "You're only good or valid if you do as I say."

It beats the self into submission to self, and "goodness" in you slashes and whips everyone around. Your soul is on the platform for sale. The price to pay is work, prove your goodness. You lose your own soul by going against your own creation. God didn't create you to be good but to be a vessel, empty and receptive. There is no goodness in the vessel. So how can you defend something that doesn't exist.

It's rebellious to be good!
How can you be something that God has not created you to be and that His very own Son living in the same fleshly body, did not ascribe to His human self?

Goodness is actually evil, it is demonic, supported by the satanic realm. Human goodness is a creation of your own making, a fabrication, and because you are in a falsehood, you are supported by the father of lies whose demonic hosts give you power and ability to be what you have created, really what he has created. You are in Satan's realm. you are intimate with demons rather than with truth. You can't stand in Satan's camp and win.
You lose. You lose. You lose.

When you go for 'good' ironically you leave God. You trade your allegiance for a demonic taskmaster. He will give you what you demand: a list of rules rather than a relationship.

We want a list of rules and we are confident we can follow them. We've worshiped the rules from the garden but they were only a signpost pointing the way to relationship, pointing the way to our need, that we will not have - that we REFUSE to have. The letter kills. The law kills.You have to use evil to be "good."

By pride, I will bow my knee to the taskmaster, "goodness" so I can be good. Then it taunts me, as Satan in the tree of good and evil. I question my God. My soul is violently raped. I clothe myself in the very same pride of goodness and say "no, I am better than you!"

My lack of goodness points out my nakedness and if I grab a fig leaf, I am dead. But if I remain naked before my God, in my raw naked humanity He will clothe me with glory and I will wear His goodness.

Goodness shakes its finger at God and speaks, "shame on you, you failure. I know better, I am better than the Father and Creator of all life." Man exalting himself above the Most High God.
I can create a better image than he can.
It's the same superiority that was in Lucifer before he fell.

If I had been true to God I would have seen him as wrong and his opinions would not have affected me. I would not move as to my place of worth in God. But I let him label me, then I accepted his label and went out and lived it.

But how should I react?
If I respond in any way, I'm going to fall into the sin of flesh working out the will of God, which is "goodness!" Only the Spirit of God can address religious evil. Christ Himself had no methodology in dealing with the religious of His day. At times He was silent. And others, he railed.

In every situation, Jesus let His response come from God. The only way to win is to submit to God because what you are combating in "goodness" is really satanic rebellion

A man called Jesus, Good Teacher.
And Jesus said to him, "Why do you call Me good? No one is good except God alone.
Mark 10:18 Luke 18:19 NAS

If the Son of God didn't ascribe to Himself goodness, how can we? Jesus lived by the goodness of His Father.

Next Month "The Religion of Goodness"

Copyright © 2001 John Enslow