{"id":40317,"date":"2026-08-19T00:42:54","date_gmt":"2026-08-19T05:42:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/?p=40317"},"modified":"2026-08-19T00:42:54","modified_gmt":"2026-08-19T05:42:54","slug":"if-no-mortal-can-ever-be-perfect-should-we-even-try-to-be-good","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/?p=40317","title":{"rendered":"If no mortal can ever be perfect, should we even try to be good?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The company next door to my office moved last week, so I had to say goodbye to some people I\u2019ve gotten to know pretty well.<\/p>\n

When I arrived back at the office late in the day last Friday, I stopped to see how their move was going. Laura was the only one left in the office and she was loading her car with the last things from her desk. She was exhausted and she stopped to chat. Then I told her something I hadn\u2019t planned to say.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m going to miss you,\u201d I told her. \u201cOf all the people who\u2019ve worked here over the years, you\u2019ve been my favorite. This might sound strange, but it\u2019s because you\u2019re a really good<\/em> person. I just want you to know that I can tell that about you.\u201d<\/p>\n

She was flattered and happy. She thanked me for telling her. The rest of our conversation just confirmed what I already thought about her. I walked away feeling glad that I had admitted what I\u2019d seen in her.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been thinking about that conversation ever since then. What about Laura struck me strongly enough that I felt like telling her that I saw her as a \u201cgood person\u201d? I wasn\u2019t sure at first. But then it hit me.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not that she\u2019s perfect. She\u2019s a pretty ordinary person. It\u2019s simply that standards of morality, ethics and decency have fallen so far that a \u201cgood person\u201d really stands out by comparison.<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s alarming to me.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not sure popular culture even defines \u201cgood\u201d as I do anymore.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not talking about perfection. I\u2019m certainly not claiming that people used to be perfect \u2014 or even that they used to be better people.<\/p>\n

People have always lied and cheated. People have always treated each other badly. Churches have always had hypocrites. I\u2019ve known plenty of them.<\/p>\n

The difference I see is that people once seemed to understand that there was a standard they were supposed to be trying to meet. That distinction matters to me.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve always wanted to be a good person. I\u2019ve never thought that meant I was perfect. I struggle to love everybody. I get incredibly angry \u2014 in my head \u2014 at the \u201cidiots\u201d around me. I don\u2019t always live up to my own standards for myself.<\/p>\n

But I\u2019ve always known what I thought was right and I\u2019ve tried to live up to it. When I\u2019ve failed, I\u2019ve known that I failed.<\/p>\n

I grew up around people who mostly seemed to understand morality that way. That was especially true in the church culture which influenced me so much. We knew we were imperfect, but we also knew that imperfection wasn\u2019t an excuse to stop trying.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not sure we still understand that distinction.<\/p>\n

I see it in something as ordinary as cheating in school. Students cheated when I was young. I knew people who did it. But they knew it was wrong. They didn\u2019t brag about cheating in a way that suggested the only people who didn\u2019t cheat were suckers.<\/p>\n

Among some of the teens I know today, there seems to be little stigma about cheating. If you can get away with it, why wouldn\u2019t you do it? If somebody else refuses to cheat because he thinks it\u2019s wrong, he\u2019s the fool.<\/p>\n

The cheating itself isn\u2019t what interests me. People have always cheated. What bothers me is the loss of the idea that we ought to be better than that.<\/p>\n

I see something similar in churches, and that bothers me even more.<\/p>\n

Churches have always been full of imperfect people. They\u2019ve always had hypocrites. My observation has been that if you look at the dominant religious group in any area, that\u2019s where you\u2019ll find most of the hypocrites.<\/p>\n

But there\u2019s a huge difference between failing to live up to a moral standard and deciding that human imperfection makes the standard meaningless.<\/p>\n

Every day, there seem to be new stories about pastors and other church leaders who have done terrible things. In too many cases, the people around them seem more concerned with protecting the leader or the institution than with doing what\u2019s right \u2014 rooting out what\u2019s rotten and taking care of the people who\u2019ve been hurt.<\/p>\n

And when someone demands better, the response sometimes amounts to, \u201cWe\u2019re all sinners.\u201d<\/p>\n

Of course we are. But that\u2019s not an excuse.<\/p>\n

Jesus said that no one is good except God alone. I\u2019m not going to get bogged down in theology here, because that\u2019s not the point I\u2019m trying to make. I\u2019m not talking about earning our way into heaven or pretending that any of us can achieve moral perfection.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m talking about how we choose to live around each other.<\/p>\n

If I know I can never be perfect, does that mean I shouldn\u2019t try to be good? If I know I\u2019m going to fail sometimes, does that mean I shouldn\u2019t have standards for myself?<\/p>\n

I can\u2019t accept that.<\/p>\n

Being a good person has always been aspirational for me. I want to treat people well. I want to do what\u2019s right even when nobody is watching. I want to be honest. I want to be decent. And when I fail at those things, I want to recognize that I\u2019ve failed instead of changing the standard to excuse myself.<\/p>\n

Maybe that\u2019s what I saw in Laura.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know enough about her life to judge her character in some grand sense. I certainly don\u2019t think she\u2019s perfect. I know she isn\u2019t, because none of us is.<\/p>\n

But in all the little interactions I\u2019ve had with her over the years, she has consistently struck me as someone who cares about treating other people well. She\u2019s kind. She\u2019s decent. She seems to have a moral center that guides the way she deals with people.<\/p>\n

That shouldn\u2019t be remarkable. But it has become remarkable enough that I felt compelled to tell her I had noticed.<\/p>\n

A decent culture doesn\u2019t require perfect people. It couldn\u2019t have them even if it wanted them.<\/p>\n

It requires ordinary, imperfect people who still believe they ought to be better than they are.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The company next door to my office moved last week, so I had to say goodbye to some people I\u2019ve gotten to know pretty well. When I arrived back at the office late in the day last Friday, I stopped to see how their move was going. Laura was the only one left in the Keep Reading<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-40317","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-uncategorized","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1x9iR-auh","jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40317","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=40317"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40317\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40328,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40317\/revisions\/40328"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=40317"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=40317"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=40317"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}