Good Enough -- July 4, 2010
GOOD ENOUGH
Galatians 6:1-16
It’s a simple, single-rectangle comic strip in which a psychoanalyst is seated in a capacious armchair and a woman is lying on a couch. She has long, curly hair and is wearing a very beautiful, frilly dress and a glittering tiara. Alongside her on the floor there is a magic wand. The woman is instantly recognizable – she is the Good Witch, just as you remember her from the movie “The Wizard of Oz.” Alongside the picture appear the words: “The Good Witch Explains.” And this is what she says. “It got to be too much – you give someone a heart, you give someone else a brain, and people start calling at all hours. Finally I realized, ‘I don’t have to be everything to everyone. I can just be . . . ‘the Good-Enough Witch.’”
A lot of people go through their lives with this “good enough” attitude. Any effort – no matter how minimal – is sufficient. Others are more like Debbie Field, founder of Mrs. Field’s Cookies, who attributes her success to this motto: “Good enough never is.”
I believe that the brave, intelligent, faithful founders of our country were people who never would and never did settle for just being “good enough.” And that’s what has made America a great nation.
In 1831 the French government sent 26-year-old Alexis de Tocqueville to the United States to study its penal system. The result was the book, Democracy in America, a voluminous masterpiece in which he assesses the promises and pitfalls of democracy. He says he sought for the greatness and genius of America in commodious harbors and ample rivers, fertile fields and boundless forests, rich mines and vast world commerce, congress and the constitution. But it was not there. “Not until I went into the churches of America,” he says “and heard her pulpits flame with righteousness did I understand the secret of her genius and power. America is great because America is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.”
In an article in the United Methodist Review, its editor and publisher Ronald P. Patterson reports on being among 120 religious leaders from all faiths who gathered for breakfast at the White House in the fall of 1999. The purpose of the meeting was to discuss with President Clinton one of the nation’s most pressing concerns, violence in America. The president challenged them to think about the question, “Is America good enough?” He asked them to consider these factors. “Possessing an abundance of “goods” are we good enough? Are we satisfied to live in a society permeated by violence and hatred? Is America good enough if we still have the highest murder rate in the world? The rate of accidental shooting deaths for children under 15 in the United States is nine times higher than the rate for the other 25 industrialized nations in the world combined! Are we good enough?” For two and a half hours they struggled with these weighty issues. Patterson says, “Now I go back to eating at the Waffle House. But I will always remember that one meal at the White House. The president’s challenge keeps ringing in my ears, “Is America good enough?” Patterson asks his readers, “What do you think?”
In his letter to the Galatians, the apostle Paul writes: “So let us not grow weary in doing what is right . . . Whenever we have an opportunity, let us work for the good of all.” Paul realizes that there are a number of conflicting lifestyles and moral guidelines available to the new Galatian converts, and that many focused on physical pleasure and immediate gratification through sex or food or frivolous behavior. So there is a real temptation of growing "weary" of always thinking in line with the Spirit, of carefully processing thoughts and desires and measuring them against the Spirit's high standards of excellence. Paul knows that sometimes it's just hard to be good! But Christians are called to be good and to do good.
His words echo John Wesley’s exhortation: “Do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, in all the places you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can, as long as ever you can. Have we missed opportunities to love and work for the good of all? It is time to recapture the integrity of our national standard, our Christian calling, and our Methodist tradition.
Today we celebrate the Fourth of July, the Independence Day of the United States of America. We are reminded once again that this is a nation under God, a nation of high ideals and principles, a nation created to do good for all people, a nation made truly great by those for whom “good enough” never was or will be.