NOWADAYS when you ask people how they’re doing, most likely you’ll get the answer, “I’m good.” This response has often intrigued me because I’m used to hearing more familiar responses like “I’m fine” or “I’m okay”. To me, “I’m good” gives a greater sense of pride and certainty. It prevents the person asking the question from digging more into another person’s life.

Instead of “I’m good” I wonder if a more fantastic response would be “I’m better” or “I’m at my best”. In this way, one presents himself or herself as someone who wants to overachieve or who is not satisfied with being an average person.

I’ve said it many times in my homilies—God does not want us just to be good; he wants us to be better, to be the best person in the world! Look at what Jesus commanded his disciples this Sunday: “So be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect.”

So what’s the difference between being “good” Christians and being “better” or “best” Christians? The Gospel gives us some answers. You’re good if you love your families and friends (Doesn’t most people do this?), but you’re better or you’re at your best if you “love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” You’re good if you help someone in need, but you’re better if you go an extra “two miles” with this person, meaning if you find other and further ways of assisting him or her. You’re good if you give little alms to your church, but you’re “perfect” if you sacrifice much more of your fortune to help your church. This is what Jesus in the Gospel meant when he said, “If anyone wants to go to law with you over your tunic, hand over your cloak as well.” The Gospel of Jesus is much more challenging and radical.

In the best-selling book, Radical: Taking Back Your Faith from the American Dream (Multnomah Books, 2010), David Platt writes that many Christians are not “walking the extra mile” or “giving up their cloak” because they have curved images of Jesus according to their own perspectives like a “nice, middle-class American Jesus who doesn’t mind materialism and who never calls us to forsake our closest relationships so that he receives all our affection…who is fine with nominal devotion that does not infringe on our comforts, because, after all, he loves us the way we are.” In presenting this reality, Platt poses the question: “But do you and I realize what we are doing at this point? We are molding Jesus into our image. He is becoming to look a lot like us because, after all, that is whom we are comfortable with. And the danger now is that when we gather in our church buildings to sing and lift up our hands in worship, we may not actually be worshipping the Jesus of the Bible. Instead we may be worshiping ourselves.”

Such comments from Platt are strong and hard to accept. But it’s true; many of us have not followed the teachings of the Gospel in a radical way. Again, to be radical means more than being good but being better, best, or perfect!

* * *

Reverend Rodel G. Balagtas attended St. John Seminary in Camarillo, California and earned his Doctor of Ministry in Preaching from Aquinas Institute of Theology in St. Louis, Missouri.  For twenty years, he has been in the parish ministry of large multi-cultural communities.  Since 2002, he has been the pastor of Immaculate Heart of Mary Church in Los Angeles. Please email Fr. Rodel at [email protected].

Back To Top