Goody-Goodies

11.15.2006

I have always been skeptical of people that try hard to appear ‘good’. Call them goody-goodies, holy rollers, efikos, do-gooders, goody two shoes, whatever. I do not like them much because they are insincere. Not that I don’t like them, I don’t care for such behavior. It happens to everyone, you are with other people and you feel the need to put on your goodie cap. I catch myself doing this also. The other day, I think it was Friday, we had some Christianly folk over and even though I had been looking forward to having a glass of plum wine that evening, I decided against it because they were present. I didn’t want them to have the wrong impression of me. Eventually, I told myself that I would have some wine if I very well felt like it and poured DH a glass as well so that I wouldn't be the only 'bad' one in the room.

Not to pick on any particular group of people but some Christians tend to fall into the goody-goodie trap. They always feel the need to put on a good face. My friends and I once had a monthly fellowship that lasted a few months but eventually got canned. I have always wondered what happened, why we couldn’t sustain it and then it occurred to me that we probably got tired of putting on goody faces. Or maybe we got tired of acting overly good?

The other day, I was at another bible study and there it was again, people putting on their goody face. I don’t know, maybe one day, it will cease to irritate me. However, that day I felt particularly uneasy. The group seemed determined to pick on homosexuals and how their behavior is not right. Okay, so you’re not gay but isn't there something that you probably do in your private life that others would consider ‘wrong’? We all know that nobody is perfect, not one of us is perfect, yet, we avoid those conversations and pick on obvious targets. It irritated me to no end that real issues were not being discussed. Instead, everyone found comfort in doing the gay-bashing thing and no one got a chance to say what areas in their own lives could possibly use some improvement. How about the fact that there’s a lot going on in the world that we are not involved with? There are so many ways we could give back to our communities yet we spend all of our time avoiding the real issues. It gets tiring after a while.

Now, goody-goodies not only abound in the church, they are also in the workplace. People who feel like they know it all and no one else has anything half-intelligent to contribute. They are the center of attention displaying employee-of-the-year-like behavior only when the boss is looking. It is all about appearances with such people. They will copy the entire office on emails just to announce they’ve caught an error in someone else’s presentation. How about going to the person directly, the rest of the group did not need yet another email from you? These people will smile at you one minute and stab you in the back the next. The other day we were at a meeting and it was funny seeing two goody-goodies trying to outdo each other. It was like we were back in primary school and they were both vying to be teacher’s pet. They both had an opinion about everything and made everyone sick at the end of the meeting. I think it was in Time magazine or maybe Inc. that I read about the pressure people are under because of the apparent need to say something at meetings in order to appear intelligent to others. Here’s the deal, if you don’t have something valid to say, you don’t have to say anything at all. People, myself included, will be glad you did.