Believing in Good

The more time I spend practicing faith in the broadest sense of the word, the more I wonder if establishing a basic belief in Good is a key component of wellness.

Establishing such a belief is far more difficult than it seems and, for some, tantamount to believing in God. This is why I use the two words interchangeably. Belief in Good is a belief system, just like believing in God is. The struggle to believe is the same, whether it is reluctance to go all-in on the word God (which is often laden with the imagery of a bearded, all knowing, White, occasionally very angry, wizardly old man who operates with an enormous amount of rules and often conflicting messages) or it is struggling to believe simply that today and all the days after it are going to go our way, come what may. 

In a purely positive person’s world, every outcome has a useful and necessary purpose, even if the person in question wanted something else. The same is true for a purely faithful person. God willed it, so it must be so. When prayers are answered, God is good. When prayers go unanswered, the truly faithful respond with the “some of God’s greatest gifts are unanswered prayers” (Garth Brooks) which is the front end of “be careful what you wish for” or “there are more tears shed over answered prayers then unanswered prayers” (Saint Teresa of Avila, the internet tells me).  

The ability to reset a baseline of basic belief in good, of faith in a positive outcome, or faith in a higher being probably all requires the same amount of effort. We can focus on a simple idea: if Good wants someone or something in our lives, that means it’s Good for us. If that something or someone we are hoping to have around can’t stay, that means it’s not Good for us. 

I have been testing out this hypothesis and, so far, it’s going… well… Good.