I’m bad, really bad (and that’s good!)

I remember when I was younger I had a pastor who was an ex-biker. My brother and I were in his fan-club.

"Im bad! Who's bad?"

We dressed like him, spoke like him, even had his hair-cut J He had a lot of things going for him, namely, he was an ex-biker! Let’s just say he was a little “rough-around-the-edges”. Much to his surprise he was rebuked on a Sunday for the label on a favourite brand of clothing of his called “Bad Boy”. Apparently the complainant was confused why the “good pastor” was advocating that he was a “bad boy”! (ha ha ha)

Truth be told, that little ole lady isn’t the only one confused. I have a bunch of really confused teens at school. They wonder why the teachers come down so heavy on them when they come to school wearing a baseball cap with rasta colours and a dagga leaf. They explain that they are not actually gangsters or thugs (and mostly they are not) but that it is good to look bad. I am also on the receiving end of every new boy’s first two weeks, the phase when he tries to impress his friends by “sticking it to the man”. Then when they realise that their bad-ass cred is shooting through the roof but their end-of-term results are falling through the floor boards they get all sweet and placid again.

But this is not just a school-boy dilemma. I’m sure many adults have experienced how hard it is to shout “Down with the system!” on Saturday and then eat humble pie when we collect the pay-check at the end of the month from the very same system. We hear all these cheesy pop songs singing about how, “I knew you were trouble when you walked in”, cos lets get real, who wants an honest, hard-working, faithful guy who pays all his bills on time and never has any trouble from the law? Pffft, boring! The very next song on the radio is someone mourning their heartbreak at the hands of an unfaithful lover.

The one that really gets me is when parents chortle at how “naughty” their little darling boy is and how “That is what makes him soooo cute!” Wow, I wonder if they will feel the same way when he is a teenager experimenting with drugs. There is this idea that if someone is too good then that is bad. Everyone must be a bit bad, that is normal and that is what makes us interesting. Obviously a person must not be too bad (that’s very bad), they must have just the right amount of badness. I hope this is starting to sound ridiculous, because it really is.

I think of how many people I have heard speaking about their life stories and are quite mournful of the fact that they never really went badly off the rails. As a result they feel like their story is boring and that they don’t have a really powerful testimony of God’s deliverance in their lives. Really?! God has preserved you from the worst of the wickedness and depravity in this world and yet you have not experienced his divine deliverance? What are the chances of that?!

I now know why people speak like this. Ever since Adam and Eve, we humans have felt that until we have experienced evil, we have not had the full package. It was not enough that that they (Adam and Eve) knew God’s breath-taking goodness, they believed the lie that unless they had tasted good and evil they would not be fulfilled. Almost immediately after they had tasted evil (sin) they were grieved by their bad decision, but by then it was too late.

I love the clarity that God’s word brings to the complicated dilemmas that we stupid humans fall into. Satan has duped us into believing that what is bad is good when it is patently obvious what that badness will ultimately lead our society into. There is no person in this world who is “just a little” sexually deviant but will, none the less, make a faithful partner. There is no one who tells a small lie to get out of trouble every now and then but, on the whole, are good people and can be a trustworthy confidant. There is no self-obsessed guy who swaggers around under the weight of his own arrogance who is also going to make a humble and loving husband. There is no flirtatious and immodest woman who at the same time will make a devout and honourable wife. And yet crazily enough, this is what many people look for! Even a small amount of badness will eventually cause unforeseen destruction in our lives. It is spine-tingling how insightful these words of God are, spoken many hundreds of years ago about our present moral dilemma: “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter. Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes and clever in their own sight. Woe to those who are heroes at drinking wine and champions at mixing drinks” (Is 5:20) As it turns out, bad is just plain bad. There is nothing good about it. Who knew?!