Good vs. God: Why Being "Nice" Is Not The Goal

8th in the Wide Witness, Deep Roots Series

I’m circling back to values and the Beatitude roots again because we still underestimate how much they matter in Kingdom ministry. A plane can be one degree off and look fine at takeoff, but given enough distance, that tiny error becomes a major miss. The same is true in the church. When we try to do God’s work with the world’s value system, we may look sincere, productive, and successful while drifting farther from the Kingdom the whole time. Think Constantine trying to “Christianize” the empire by the sword. Sincere? Likely. Faithful? That is another question. That is the power of values.

The church has a dangerous habit of mistaking results for righteousness. If attendance is up, giving is strong, the brand looks polished, and the room feels inspired, we are tempted to call it “good” and move on. But the Kingdom of God is not dazzled by polished optics, inflated metrics, or ministry success powered by worldly instincts. Something can look fruitful, feel strategic, and still be rotten at the root. You can build a ministry that helps some people, flatters many more, and quietly trains everyone to love the wrong kingdom.

That is the problem with “good” done without God. It is not neutral. It is not harmless. It is not even truly good. It is often rebellion with better branding. Scripture does not let us grade righteousness on a curve. Jesus warns that religious acts can be done to be seen. Paul says even costly sacrifice can amount to nothing without love. The world asks, “Did it work?” The Kingdom asks, “Was it true? Was it faithful? Was it from faith? Did it honor God?” That is why the Ring in The Lord of the Rings is such a useful picture: evil power does not become holy because a good man picks it up. It just becomes evil with a sermon outline.

The Ring Always Comes with a Reason

If you want to understand the modern, respectable church person, you would not start with Judas. You might start with Boromir. Boromir is one of the most useful men in Middle-earth for diagnosing respectable church folk.

He is not a cartoon villain. He is brave, loyal, patriotic, and he genuinely loves his people. In our setting, Boromir is the guy who serves on the stewardship committee, never misses Wednesday night, and volunteers to drive the youth van to D-Now. He sees darkness gathering in the culture and wants to stop it.

His problem is not that he wants a bad thing. His problem is more frightening, and much more common: he wants a good thing in a godless way. He looks at the Ring of Power and thinks, Why shouldn’t we use this for something noble?¹ That is exactly what makes him dangerous.

The Ring is evil not merely because it does bad things, but because it teaches a false doctrine of goodness. It whispers that you may seize power, bend wills, manipulate outcomes, and still call the result righteous. That is why it ruins good people first. Not by making them love evil in the abstract, but by teaching them to pursue good as little gods.

Miss this, and you will misunderstand how temptation usually works. The worst temptations rarely arrive with horns and a pitchfork. If Satan showed up offering open heresy and obvious depravity, most church people would run him out of the sanctuary. Usually temptation shows up with a Bible under its arm, a printed bulletin in hand, and a very reasonable explanation.

That is why one of the deepest battles in the Christian life is not good versus evil in the obvious, comic-book sense. If it were, sanctification would mostly be a matter of not robbing banks and not setting things on fire. No, the real battle is more subtle than that. It is my definition of “good” versus God’s definition of the good. It is the daily clash between what seems right, useful, efficient, protective, impressive, or compassionate to me, and what is actually holy, fitting, and obedient before God.

And that battle is closer to home than most of us want to admit. We are masters at spiritualizing fleshly desires. We say we want peace, but often we mean comfort. We say we want justice, but often we mean our side finally getting the microphone. We say we want love, but often we mean affirmation without repentance. We say we want strength, but often we mean control with a Bible verse taped to it. We say we want a healthy church, but often we mean a church that is polished, efficient, conflict-averse, numerically reassuring, and unlikely to embarrass us at associational or convention meetings.

In other words, the human soul is not usually seduced by obvious evil first. It is seduced by a rival good. Boom.

Nice Is Not the New Birth

Jesus walks straight into this problem in Matthew 5:17–20. He says He did not come to abolish the Law or the Prophets but to fulfill them, and then He drops the line that should make every polished, well-mannered religious person sit up straighter in the pew: “unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 5:20, ESV).

That is not Jesus handing out gold stars for respectable morality. That is Jesus detonating the illusion that niceness, religious habit, and moral presentation are enough.

We read the Pharisees as the obvious bad guys because we know the ending. In their own day, they were the serious people, the careful people, the Bible-quoting people, the tradition-guarding people, the policy people. Their problem was not that they cared too much about righteousness. Their problem was that they had learned how to keep righteousness at the surface. They had mastered the art of managed behavior without surrendered affections. They had the look without the life. The finish without the joinery. Fruit stapled on, but no sap in the tree.

Southern hospitality is a fine thing, but it is not a fruit of the Spirit. You can smile, say “bless your heart,” bring a casserole to the sick, and still harbor bitterness, pride, greed, and envy. Jesus is after something much deeper than improved optics. He is after the renovation of the whole person.

That is why the Beatitudes do not read like a strategy session from a modern church leadership conference. That is why they are the roots in my Christian Character Tree. If we wrote the Beatitudes today, they would sound very different. But Jesus does not say, “Blessed are the impressive, the efficient, the platformed, and the impossible to criticize.” He says blessed are the poor in spirit, those who mourn, the meek, those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers, and the persecuted.

That is not how the world defines winning. Frankly, it is not how many churches define it either. Tell me I’m wrong.

Jesus Redefines the Good

The Beatitudes do not merely tell us how to behave. They tell us what kind of life God actually calls blessed.

Take meekness. D. A. Carson points out that meekness is not weakness or servility. It is not being a doormat. It is a God-centered posture that yields one’s rights and future into God’s hands rather than grasping, retaliating, and insisting on self-assertion.²

That matters because the world’s vision of the good is built on self-protection. The secular gospel preaches this liturgy all day long: protect your image, protect your comfort, protect your tribe, protect your options, protect your leverage, protect your brand, protect your right to be left alone.

Jesus, by contrast, calls blessed the person who has stopped making self-protection the center of the moral universe.

“Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth” (Matt. 5:5, ESV).

The world hears that and thinks, “That’s adorable. Meanwhile, the ruthless bought all the prime real estate.” But Jesus is not confused about how reality works. He is telling us that the Kingdom of God is not inherited by the grabby, the brash, the perpetually offended, or the power-addicted. It is inherited by those who trust the Father enough to stop reaching for the Ring.

John Piper describes meekness as trusting God, committing our way to Him, waiting patiently for Him, and therefore not giving way to quick and fretful anger.³ That is strong medicine in an age where perpetual outrage is treated like discernment and wrath is confused with courage. Spend five minutes on social media and you will find believers shredding each other while imagining they are defending the faith. Some of us are not nearly as principled as we think. We are just baptizedly irritated.

When Good Things Start Asking for Worship

Peter Kreeft is helpful here because he insists that truth, goodness, and beauty are not decorative ideas floating in the air. They are realities grounded in God Himself.⁴ Thomas Aquinas, in the great Christian tradition, treated them as bound together in being: what is truly true and truly good is not finally severed from what is beautiful.⁵

That means “good” is not a toy we get to rename every election cycle or every time the culture updates its playlist. The good is not whatever works. The good is not whatever sells. The good is not whatever keeps me comfortable, admired, and unbothered. The good is what corresponds to God’s reality, God’s character, and God’s purposes.

And here is where things get uncomfortable for conservative, well-meaning Christians: a lesser good can become a functional god in about ten minutes. Maybe faster.

Family is good. Safety is good. Competence is good. Influence is good. Ministry growth is good. Being thought of as balanced and reasonable is good.

But when any created good begins demanding the trust, fear, sacrifice, and obedience that belong to God alone, it has stopped acting like a gift and started acting like an idol.⁶ That is why the difference between “good” and “god” is only one letter on the page and a whole universe in the soul.

Tim Keller often said that idols are not usually bad things, but good things turned into ultimate things. That is exactly the danger. We do not usually wake up, pour our coffee, and say, “Today feels like a great day to deny Christ and worship Baal.” We say things that sound spiritual. I just want stability for my family. I just want influence for the gospel. I just want success so I can do more good. I just want peace in the church.

Then the lesser good climbs onto the throne. And once that happens, compromise starts getting renamed. We call fear “prudence.” We call cowardice “unity.” We call self-protection “discernment.” We call worldliness “strategy.” We shade the truth to protect the ministry. We flatter people to protect access. We avoid necessary conflict to protect the church’s brand.

That is not holiness. That is interior public relations.

Justice, Love, and the Right Order of the Soul

This is why justice and love must stay tightly joined.

Justice, as a cardinal virtue, means giving God and neighbor their due. It begins by giving God His proper place as the One who defines reality, goodness, and moral order. If God does not define the good in my life, someone else will. Usually that someone is me. And let’s be honest: I am a deeply unreliable deity.

Love, as a theological virtue, keeps justice from becoming cold, mechanical, and self-congratulatory. Love refuses to use truth as a club or people as props in our own spiritual success story. Love remembers that the goal of obedience is not merely to be correct, but to be rightly ordered toward God and toward those made in His image.

Justice without love becomes a hammer in the hands of proud people. Love without justice becomes pudding—sweet, shapeless, and unable to bear weight. The Kingdom needs both.

This also helps explain why “good vs. God” is not really a contest between two equal options. God is not competing with the good. God is the source, measure, and fulfillment of the good. John Piper is right: the greatest gift of the gospel is God Himself.⁷ Forgiveness is glorious because it brings us to God. Justification is glorious because it brings us to God. Eternal life is glorious not because the streets are gold, but because it is life with God.

So the real conflict in the human heart is not finally between God and goodness. It is between God and all the lesser goods that try to replace Him. Christian maturity is not merely learning to reject bad things. Plenty of pagans reject bad things. Christian maturity is learning to keep good things in second place.

We Live in Two Kingdoms, Not Two Planets

Dallas Willard kept reminding the church that the gospel is not merely an evacuation plan for the afterlife. It is the invitation to live now in the kingdom of God, which he defined as the range of God’s effective will.⁸ That means this struggle over values is not theoretical, abstract, or confined to seminary debates.

It is right here. Right now. It is painfully ordinary.

This battle shows up in board rooms and browser histories. In church budgets and group texts. In how we staff churches and how we speak to our spouses when we are tired. In what we reward, platform, excuse, fear, and celebrate.

You can affirm the Baptist Faith and Message 2000, pass an ordination council, and still run your life on worldly fuel: speed, image, leverage, comfort, outrage, and control. You can say you are against “the world” while borrowing its methods, metrics, and cravings almost by reflex. Just mention the Guidepost Report on the SBC Executive Committee or the public failures at Truett McConnell University and the point lands with a thud. Ouch.

C. S. Lewis warned about “men without chests”⁹—people with sharp minds and strong appetites but no formed moral center. That diagnosis lands hard in our moment. That is why I keep using it. We have information everywhere. We have opinions stacked to the ceiling. We have instincts, takes, reactions, and rhetoric. But too often we do not have a chest: a trained heart with rightly ordered loves.

That is why Willard’s old warning about “vampire Christians” still stings.¹⁰ Plenty of people want the benefits of Jesus’ blood but not the burden of His life. We want rescue without apprenticeship. Forgiveness without formation. Salvation without surrender. Heaven without holiness.

But the Kingdom of God is not in the business of recruiting nicer consumers. It is in the business of forming an entirely new kind of person.

The Two-Column Kingdom Test

So let’s move from polemic to practice.

Take one significant decision you are facing right now—family, church, money, schedule, conflict, calling, whatever—and draw a line down the middle of a page.

On the left side write: What the World Calls Good.

On the right side write: What Jesus Calls Good.

Then be honest enough to make yourself uncomfortable.

Does the world call this option good because it is efficient, safe, admired, lucrative, impressive, validating, fast, or powerful? Does Jesus call it good because it is true, meek, just, merciful, pure, faithful, and obedient?

Then ask the harder questions. What outcome am I most desperate to protect? What fear is driving me? Which Beatitude am I resisting because it feels weak? What fruit of the Spirit would obedience require here? And if Christ’s way costs me status, speed, comfort, or applause, do I still have the faith to call it good?

That little sheet of paper may expose more about your functional theology than a month of vague religious self-talk.

Choose Your Good Carefully

In the end, the question facing the modern church is not whether we value the good. Everybody does.

The real question is: who gets to define it?

The kingdom of this world keeps preaching the same sermon: the good life is found in autonomy, appetite, image management, comfort, and appearances. It is a slick sales pitch. It is also spiritually hollow.

The kingdom of God tells a very different story. The good life is found in surrender, holiness, truth, mercy, meekness, quiet faithfulness, and sacrificial love under the lordship of Christ.

That path looks foolish until the storm comes. Then suddenly roots matter a great deal.

So no, the goal of the Christian life is not to become a “nice person.” Let’s retire that pathetic ambition. Nice people can still be cowards. Nice people can still worship comfort. Nice people can still dodge truth to keep the peace. Nice people can still protect idols with impeccable Southern manners. And nice people, just like Boromir, can still reach for the Ring.

Jesus did not bleed and die to make us nicer Pharisees. He came to make us new creatures.

So yes—be kind. Be patient. Be gracious.

But do not confuse pleasant with holy. Do not confuse cultural respectability with biblical righteousness. Do not confuse good intentions with godliness. And do not confuse a lesser good with God.

Because sooner or later every disciple has to face the question underneath all the others:

Do I want what seems good to me? Or do I want God enough to let Him redefine the good?

That is where surrender begins.

And that is where deep roots begin.

Endnotes

1. J. R. R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings, Illustrated ed. (New York: William Morrow, 2020), “The Breaking of the Fellowship,” 398-99.

2. D. A. Carson, “Kingdom of Heaven: Its Norms and Witness,” sermon on Matthew 5:1-16, April 26, 1975, The Gospel Coalition. https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/sermon/kingdom-of-heaven-its-norms-and-witness-matthew-5-1-16/

3. John Piper, “What Is Meekness?” Desiring God, May 15, 2012. https://www.desiringgod.org/articles/what-is-meekness

4. Peter Kreeft, “Lewis’s Philosophy of Truth, Goodness, and Beauty,” in C. S. Lewis as Philosopher: Truth, Goodness, and Beauty, ed. David Baggett, Gary R. Habermas, and Jerry L. Walls (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2008), 16-17.

5. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, I, q. 16, a. 3; cf. I, q. 5, a. 1, trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province.

6. Timothy Keller, Counterfeit Gods: The Empty Promises of Money, Sex, and Power, and the Only Hope That Matters (New York: Dutton, 2009), xvii-xix.

7. John Piper, God Is the Gospel: Meditations on God’s Love as the Gift of Himself (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2005).

8. Dallas Willard, The Divine Conspiracy: Rediscovering Our Hidden Life in God (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1998), 25. (This is my favorite all-time book outside of the Bible. If you’ve read my blogs, I can hardly write one without at least one Willard quote..and one Lewis quote as well)

9. C. S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man or Reflections on Education with Special Reference to the Teaching of English in the Upper Forms of Schools (New York: HarperOne, 2001), 16.

10. Dallas Willard, The Great Omission: Reclaiming Jesus’s Essential Teachings on Discipleship (New York: HarperCollins, 2006), 14.

WHERE THE SAP FLOWS, LIFE GROWS

7th in the Wide Witness, Deep Roots Series

Habits as the “pipeline” of Christlike character

Life hacks do not heal a starving soul. A cleaner planner cannot grow fruit on a dying tree. You can polish the bark, spray the leaves, and staple a few shiny pieces of fruit to the branches, but if the roots are dry, the tree is still in trouble. That was the point of Blog 6: The Underground Secret to Overground Fruit. This is the next step.

If the Christian Character Tree is going to live, the roots have to keep drawing from the right soil, the sap has to keep moving, the trunk has to stay sound, and the branches have to bear real fruit. That is where habits come in. Not trendy hacks. Not spiritual cosmetics. Habits. The repeated, ordinary practices that train the heart, steady the will, and keep the whole tree alive.¹

That means your morning routine is not a throwaway detail. It is not the practice before the "real" spiritual life begins. It is one of the places where your discipleship is already happening. And if we want a wide witness, we will need deep roots. If we want deep roots, we will need holy habits.

Your roots are already growing somewhere

The hard truth is this: you are already being formed. Dallas Willard often stated that everyone has spiritual formation. It is just that some have a better one than others. 

It is a process that happens to everyone. The most despicable as well as the most admirable of persons have had a spiritual formation. Terrorists as well as saints are the outcome of spiritual formation. Their spirits or hearts have been formed. Period.²

Your life already has routines. Your habits already lean the tree in a direction.

Your phone is training your attention. Your schedule is training your loves. Your reflexes are training your responses. What you repeatedly do is not just filling time. It is feeding roots. This is both scary and reassuring. 

That is why the old line commonly attributed to Charles Reade still works: 

sow a thought, reap an act; 

sow an act, reap a habit; 

sow a habit, reap a character; 

sow a character, reap a destiny.³ 

That is not decorative wall art. It is a warning. The person you are becoming is not built mainly by your intentions. It is built by your repetitions.

So if your days are filled with hurry, noise, irritation, vanity, distraction, and low-grade panic, do not be surprised when the fruit on the branches starts looking thin, bitter, and plastic. Formation happened. It just was not the kind you wanted.

What you behold feeds the roots

Psalm 115 says idol-makers become like their idols. Paul says that as we behold the glory of the Lord, we are being transformed into his image.⁴ Put those together and the point is plain: you become like what holds your gaze.

That means the battle for character is, in part, a battle for attention. The first thing you consistently look at each day is not a small matter. It is a worship matter.

This is where Tolkien helps. The Shire is formed by ordinary loves: meals, gardens, songs, fellowship, and grateful stewardship.⁵ Mordor is formed by domination, fear, machinery, and a will bent on control. Every day, our habits nudge the roots of our lives toward one world or the other.

The Shire says, receive, tend, give thanks, and stay present. Mordor says, consume, react, dominate, hurry, scroll, rage, repeat. Modern Christians often want Shire fruit while living by Mordor habits. Then we wonder why one hour of church cannot undo six days of digital vaping.

If the roots keep drawing from polluted streams, the fruit will show it. If the roots keep drawing from the goodness and glory of God, the whole tree will begin to change.

Jesus lived by holy rhythms

Jesus did not drift into faithfulness. He lived by holy patterns. He withdrew to pray. He rose early. He fasted. He worshiped with the gathered people of God "as was his custom." He filled his mind and speech with Scripture.⁶

In other words, the most spiritually alive human being who ever lived did not treat communion with the Father like a random mood. He lived by repeated practices.

That matters, because some Christians talk as if any routine is automatically lifeless. It is not. DEAD routine is lifeless. PROUD routine is lifeless. EMPTY routine is lifeless. But wise, grace-dependent patterns are often the channels through which life flows.

Dallas Willard spent years pressing this point. Spiritual disciplines are not righteousness. They are not badges for the already impressive. They are ways of placing ourselves before God so that he can do in us what we cannot do by direct effort alone. Grace is not opposed to effort. It is opposed to earning.⁷

That is exactly the balance of 2 Peter 1. God gives what we need for life and godliness, and for that very reason we are to make every effort to grow.⁸ No earning. No passivity. Grace first. Then grace-fueled effort. That is how healthy roots deepen.

Habits are the sap, not the fruit

Let us be clear. Habits are not the fruit. You can have a Bible app, a prayer list, a journal, and a routine polished enough to make a productivity coach weep with joy, and still be proud, harsh, impatient, and spiritually thin.

But habits are the sap lines. They are the channels that keep life moving from the roots to the branches. They are not the fruit on the tree, but they are part of how nourishment reaches the limbs.

That is why books like Atomic Habits and The Power of Habit are useful servants, even if they are terrible saviors. They remind us that repeated actions shape identity, and that much of our behavior runs in well-worn loops.⁹ That is not a theology of sanctification, but it does explain why so many sins feel automatic.

The cue hits. 

The reflex fires. 

The groove gets deeper.

So many believers are praying for better fruit while protecting the very routines that keep feeding the old root system. We pray for peace and rehearse panic. We pray for purity and keep the trigger in our pocket. We pray for patience and keep marinating in irritation. Then we ask why the tree still looks sick.

Because roots, sap, and repetition matter. That is why.

Virtue grows where habits keep feeding the tree

The cardinal virtues do not grow by admiration alone. Prudence needs the habit of slowing down long enough to pray and think. Justice needs repeated acts of giving God and neighbor their due. Temperance needs practice telling appetite "no" before appetite becomes lord of the orchard. Fortitude grows when we keep costly obediences long enough for courage to stop feeling unusual.

The theological virtues need repeated nourishment too. Faith is strengthened when we repeatedly trust God's Word over our mood. Hope is strengthened when we remember God's promises more often than we rehearse our fears. Love is strengthened when we keep moving toward God and neighbor in cheerful sacrifice.

And when the sun of God’s grace energizes those virtues, the branches begin to bear the Fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.¹⁰ Real fruit is not stapled on from the outside. It grows from the inside out.

That is why Philippians 4 matters here. Paul tells believers to set their minds on what is true, honorable, just, pure, lovely, excellent, and praiseworthy, and then to practice what they have learned.¹¹ That is Christian formation in plain clothes. Feed the roots on what is true, good and beautiful. Keep the sap moving through holy practice. Then trust God to grow the fruit.

Why change feels so hard

Change is hard because sin is not just a bad decision here and there. We are born in it.¹² Then we feed it. It becomes a set of loves, reflexes, habits, and grooves that have been carving channels through the soul for years.

You are not just changing a schedule. You are pushing against momentum in a rut.

That is why sheer willpower usually collapses by midweek, often right around the moment somebody says something ridiculous in your church meeting.

C. S. Lewis gives us a vivid picture in Eustace Scrubb. (Yes, I’ve used him before, but he is such a good illustration.) He can scratch off some dragon skin himself, but not deeply enough. Aslan has to go deeper, and it hurts.¹³ That is sanctification. God does not merely touch up the bark. He goes after the disease at the root.

But grace does not make effort unnecessary. Grace makes effort meaningful. So if changing habits feels difficult, that is not proof that it is fake or futile. It is often proof that something real is being challenged. Old roots do not surrender easily or politely.

Simple habits that help the tree live

Do not overcomplicate this. You do not need a heroic holiness system by Thursday. You need a few clear practices that keep the roots in the right soil and the sap moving in the right direction.

Start with habits like these:

• Scripture before your phone. Let truth set the weather of your mind before the internet gets its turn.

• Prayer before panic. When anxiety hits, turn it into a petition before it hardens into a private panic.

• Short fasts. Let the body learn that appetite is a servant, not a king.

• Confession. Pull sin into the light before it keeps rotting the roots in secret.

• Corporate worship. A lone tree in a storm is vulnerable. A healthy grove strengthens together.

• Service. Love that never leaves the mouth rarely reaches the hands.

• Witness. Sharing with others what God has done for you. This rehearses for you God’s saving grace in your life and opens this grace for others. 

• Gratitude. Receive God’s world as a gift instead of demanding it serve your comfort.

• Beauty walk. Walk outside for thirty minutes. No talking about frustrations. No photographing. No posting. No turning wonder into content. Just notice three things that are gratuitously beautiful and offer a simple prayer of thanks. 

These habits are not sentimental fluff. It is root work. It trains the soul to notice God’s gift instead of living in a permanent state of cortisol alarm.

A church is an orchard, not just a single tree

This is not only about individual believers. A congregation has habits too. A church repeats things, rewards things, normalizes things, and avoids things. Those repeated patterns shape the orchard.

If a church repeatedly rushes, performs, flatters, and entertains, it should not be shocked when it produces consumers with religious language. If a church repeatedly prays, sings truth, confesses sin, reads Scripture with reverence, practices hospitality, bears burdens, and serves the weak, it should not be shocked when the orchard starts bearing healthier fruit.

Ephesians 4 says Christ gives leaders so that the whole body grows up into maturity, joined together and building itself up in love.¹⁴ The goal is not one impressive tree in the middle of a dying field. The goal is a living orchard.

So churches need shared habits: unhurried prayer, Scripture read like God is speaking, songs that teach, honest confession, glad communion, real hospitality, and structures that help people endure together. A church's future fruit is hiding in its present routines.

Start smaller than your ego wants

Do not answer all this by becoming a spiritual extremist for forty-eight hours.

Start smaller than your ego wants and deeper than your flesh prefers.

Before you touch your phone, open Scripture and pray.

Before you react, pause and give thanks.

Before you end the day in noise, read a psalm.

Before you answer sharply, answer slowly.

Pick two or three practices that are small enough to repeat, simple enough to obey, and strong enough to keep feeding the roots over time.

The Christian life is usually not flashy. It is organic. Slow. Repetitive. Hidden before it is visible. Like roots. Like sap. Like a tree doing real work long before anyone notices the fruit.

The question that tells the truth

So here is the question: what are your habits making you love?

Because sooner or later, what you love will show up in the tree.

Sow a thought. Sow an act. Sow a habit. And by grace, sow the kind of life that can hold up under the weight of obedience when storms come.

Trade the liturgies of anxiety for the practices of the Kingdom. Behold Christ before you behold chaos. Keep the roots in good soil. Keep the sap moving. Stay in the grove. And do it long enough that holy habits stop feeling like chores and start becoming the grain of your life.

The world does not need one more church with polished branding and brittle branches. It needs deep-rooted people, and deep-rooted congregations, whose hidden habits have made them look unmistakably like Jesus.

Endnotes

¹Willard, Dallas. The Great Omission: Reclaiming Jesus's Essential Teachings on Discipleship. HarperSanFrancisco, 2006. pp. 85-87.

²Willard, Dallas. Renovation of the Heart: Putting on the Character of Christ. NavPress, 2002. p.19. 

³https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Reade?utm_source=chatgpt.com 

⁴Psalm 115:4-8; 2 Corinthians 3:18 (ESV).

⁵J. R. R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1954-1955). 

⁶Luke 4:16; Mark 1:35; Luke 5:16; Matthew 4:2 (ESV).

⁷Willard, Dallas. The Great Omission: Reclaiming Jesus's Essential Teachings on Discipleship. HarperSanFrancisco, 2006. p.61.

⁸2 Peter 1:3-11 (ESV).

⁹James Clear. Atomic Habits. Avery, 2018; Charles Duhigg. The Power of Habit. Random House, 2012.

¹⁰Galatians 5:22-23 (ESV).

¹¹Philippians 4:8-9 (ESV).

¹²Psalm 51:5 (ESV). 

¹³Lewis, C. S. The Chronicles of Narnia Collection,“The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.” Barnes & Noble, 2010 Edition. pp. 474-475. 

¹⁴Ephesians 4:11-16 (ESV).

THE UNDERGROUND SECRET TO OVERGROUND FRUIT

If you’ve been following this series, you already know my satire: Because nothing says “mature discipleship” like duct-taped joy and plastic patience zip-tied to dead bark.

Blog #5 (“Stop Stapling Fruit to Dead Trees”) was about values—the underground decisions that quietly determine what a church (and a Christian) will actually do when nobody is watching. This blog (#6) is the sequel: not “What do the roots believe?” but “What do the roots absorb?”

Because healthy roots aren’t just committed. They’re receptive. They don’t manufacture nutrients; they take in what the soil provides. And in the Christian Character Tree framework, the Beatitudes function like a root system—eight “root postures” that position us to receive the “supplements” Peter lists in 2 Peter 1:3-7.

And just to be clear, I am writing from a grace-first sanctification, Scripture as final authority, and virtue language that serves discipleship–not moralism perspective. What I don’t want to imply is that you and I are somehow responsible for generating the “fruit of the Spirit”(Galatians 5:23). After all, it is called “the fruit of the Spirit” not “the fruit of our effort.”

Neither do I want to come across as promoting some kind of religious moralism. Adhering to a certain code of moral behavior is not the end result of what the LORD is looking for. That would just breed self-righteousness or despair, and we don’t want either of those delivered by Amazon or by anyone else to our front door.  

The soil matters before the supplements

Before we talk about supplements, let’s do a little review.  Remember Peter’s assumption: you’re planted in real soil.

In my tree framework, the soil is the Transcendentals—the True, the Good, and the Beautiful—objective realities grounded in God, not vibes grounded in our mood.  If you try to grow character in the shifting sand of cultural relativism, the tree will topple (probably while posting inspirational quotes).

That matters because the Beatitudes are not “cute attitudes.” They are the way a soul stays planted in reality. For example:

• Poor in spirit is truth about my need.

• Hunger for righteousness is goodness as more than preference.

• Peacemaking is beauty’s cousin—harmony, unity, wholeness.

When the soil is true, good, and beautiful, the roots know what counts as nourishment.

Why the Beatitudes can work as a root system

A root system does three big things: anchors, absorbs, and transports.

• It anchors the tree so storms don’t uproot it.

• It absorbs water and minerals the tree can’t produce.

• It transports nourishment upward so fruit is organic—not stapled.

Now look at Jesus’ Beatitudes (Matthew 5:3–10). They aren’t a list of spiritual achievements. They are the posture of a life open to the kingdom—small enough to receive, honest enough to repent, hungry enough to keep seeking, steady enough to endure.

One helpful way to say it: the Beatitudes don’t read like “do these things to get blessed.” They read like “God’s kingdom has come near even to people the world calls unblessable.”¹ That is root logic.

And that’s exactly how this Character Tree maps it: Beatitudes as root postures, Peter’s list serves as nutrients/supplements for growth, and the Spirit’s fruit as what naturally grows when the plumbing is working.

Peter starts with God’s supply, not your hustle

Peter’s growth plan begins with a sentence that crushes religious self-improvement:

God’s divine power “has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness” and has given “precious and very great promises” (2 Pet. 1:3–4, ESV). Before you “supplement” anything, God supplies everything you need. This is so HUGE! Take a moment to ponder this. If what you are considering involves anything to do with life (zoe´, the eternal kind of life) and godliness (eusebeia, the appropriate beliefs and practices about God and for God), you are gifted with it already. 

Then comes that hot phrase: “partakers of the divine nature” (2 Pet. 1:4). This does not mean humans become God by nature or essence. Rather, it means we are invited to participate in God’s life by grace — sharing in His divine energies while never becoming identical to His divine essence.

Are you getting this? Peter is not saying we become gods. He’s saying God shares his moral life with us—his character, his holiness—so we begin to look like our Father through Christ and the Spirit.² We become like Christ in our character. As we align to the nature of God we are able to be conduits for the flow of His power. Power that is always enough should also be regulated by character. 

So Peter’s order is:

Gift → Posture → Practice → Fruit → Assurance.

God supplies. Roots receive. Branches grow. Fruit appears.

That’s why the Beatitudes matter: they keep your soul open to what God is actually giving.

Why this posture matters in the Christian life

We all love virtue growth until it costs us.

We want love, but not enemies.

We want peace, but not conflict.

We want self-control, but also seconds.

We want steadfastness… with an exit clause.

The Beatitudes are gatekeeper roots because they force you into reality before you try to run on strength. For example: “Poor in spirit” is spiritual bankruptcy—no swagger, no pretending, no “God is lucky to have me.” That posture matters because you can’t absorb grace while clutching your own righteousness like a Kohl's coupon.

And each Beatitude does something similar: it bends the heart low enough to receive. It keeps sanctification from becoming performance. Without them, we may gain what the culture and even the religious culture is offering (junk food at best), but miss what God is really trying to give us so that we may really know Him, not just try to be something for Him. 

As the Apostle Paul wrote: “⁸…For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ ⁹and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith— ¹⁰that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death.” (Philippians 3:8–11, ESV)

This is why it is important to have all the beatitude roots in good shape. If any are not absorbing as they should, you will be deficient in that area. 

Which supplements are absorbed by which roots?

Here’s the absorption map straight from the Tree framework:

1. Poor in spirit → absorbs faith

2. Those who mourn → absorbs virtue (moral excellence)

3. The meek → absorbs knowledge

4. Those who hunger and thirst for righteousness → absorbs self-control

5. The merciful → absorbs steadfastness

6. The pure in heart → absorbs godliness

7. The peacemakers → absorbs brotherly affection

8. The persecuted for righteousness → absorbs love

Now, let’s put some flesh on those bones (apologies for adding another metaphor)—what each root posture does as it absorbs its nutrient (supplement),  what happens when it’s closed, and how it nourishes the virtues.

Root 1: Poor in spirit → Faith

Admitting spiritual bankruptcy is the only way to draw up grace. Faith grows best in a soul that has stopped negotiating with God.

When this root is closed, faith becomes either (a) optimism with Bible verses, or (b) anxiety with Bible verses. When it’s open, faith becomes settled dependence.

Virtue nourishment: faith is the foundational theological virtue, and it also opens the hinge of prudence (wisdom), because humility is how wisdom starts.  “When pride comes, then comes disgrace, but with the humble is wisdom.” (Proverbs 11:2, ESV)

Root 2: Those who mourn → Virtue (moral excellence)

We grow in moral excellence when we truly grieve the ugliness of sin. Mourning turns “I got caught” into “I was wrong.” That grief is not despair; it’s spiritual honesty.

When this root is closed, virtue turns performative—image management. When it’s open, virtue becomes integrity.

Virtue nourishment: virtue (moral excellence) strengthens justice (a real concern for right and wrong), and it strengthens hope because comfort comes from God, not denial.

Root 3: The meek → Knowledge

Only a submissive heart can receive knowledge without arrogance. Meekness is strength under God’s authority, which means you can learn without constantly defending your ego.

When this root is closed, knowledge becomes ammunition. When it’s open, knowledge becomes wisdom.

Virtue nourishment: knowledge feeds prudence—knowing what to do, how to do it, when to do it, and why you should do it.

Root 4: Hunger for righteousness → Self-control

You only control lower appetites if you have a superior hunger for God. Self-control isn’t mainly about saying “no.” It’s about wanting a better “yes.”

When this root is closed, self-control becomes white-knuckle religion. When it’s open, self-control becomes a trained desire.

Virtue nourishment: this is temperance—the ability to enjoy good things without worshiping them.

Root 5: The merciful → Steadfastness

Practicing constant forgiveness builds the muscle of enduring compassion. Mercy is not a mood; it’s a habit. And habits require endurance.

When this root is closed, mercy turns into cynicism (“I tried being kind once—never again”). When it’s open, mercy becomes resilient.

Virtue nourishment: this is fortitude in everyday clothes—steadfastness that keeps obeying when obedience isn’t interesting.

Root 6: Pure in heart → Godliness

Purity is singleness of focus—practicing God’s presence. A divided heart can do religious activity for years and still be spiritually hollow.

When this root is closed, godliness becomes a stage persona. When it’s open, godliness becomes a life oriented toward God—public and private.

Virtue nourishment: godliness stabilizes justice (giving God his due) and prudence (because double-minded plans collapse).

Root 7: The peacemakers → Brotherly affection

Peacemaking exhibits kindness and reconciliation. Peacemaking isn’t “keeping the peace” by avoiding hard conversations; it’s doing the hard work that makes peace possible. Peace is a healing and a harmony, not an absence of strife. The dead don’t argue. (Ecclesiastes 9:6)

When this root is closed, brotherly affection becomes tribal (“kind to our people, cold to everyone else”). When it’s open, brotherly affection becomes family love.

Virtue nourishment: it strengthens justice (giving others dignity) and temperance (restraining the ego that loves a fight).

Root 8: The persecuted → Love

Enduring suffering for Jesus is the ultimate test of sacrificial love. It’s easy to love when the sun is shining; it takes deep roots to love when the world is burning you down.

When this root is closed, love becomes approval-addicted. When it’s open, love becomes cruciform—shaped like the cross.

Virtue nourishment: love is the theological summit, and it fuels fortitude (courage under fire). God always responds to love, for it is what He is. (1 John 4:7-8) It gives us courage in the face of fear,  knowing that whatever may happen or not happen it will be because God has made it so out of love. 

Why this makes a difference in the Cardinal and Theological virtues

My framework distinguishes cardinal virtues (the trunk) from theological virtues (branches). 

• Cardinal virtues are “cardinal” because everything hinges on them (Latin cardo, hinge): prudence, justice, temperance, fortitude.³ This is why in the images you see a small hinge in the “virtue nourishment” box.

• Theological virtues are “theological” because they originate in God and aim at God: faith, hope, love—and in the classical tradition they are “divinely infused.”⁴

Now notice Peter’s chain: it starts with faith and climaxes in love (theological bookends). In between are hinge-strengtheners:

• Knowledge feeds prudence.

• Virtue and godliness feed justice.

• Self-control feeds temperance.

• Steadfastness feeds fortitude.

When the Beatitude roots are open, the hinges stop squeaking and the gifts stop getting treated like personality traits.

Or, as one famous line from a devil’s correspondence in the Screwtape Letters puts it: “Courage [fortitude] is not simply one of the virtues but the form of every virtue at the testing point.”⁵ When the virtues are stretched and tested and taken as far as one can go, if any such as “Love” or “Justice” bends to danger, it will be only love or justice under certain conditions. As Lewis quipped, “Pilate was merciful till it became risky.”⁶ 

Beatitudes keep effort from becoming earning

Here’s where Baptists and many evangelicals often get tangled: Peter says “make every effort” (2 Pet. 1:5), while we insist salvation is by grace.

A better framing (and a necessary one): grace kills earning, not effort. “Grace is not opposed to effort… it is opposed to earning.”⁷

And the Beatitudes keep your effort from turning into earning:

• Poor in spirit keeps effort humble.

• Mourning keeps effort repentant.

• Meekness keeps effort teachable.

• Hunger keeps effort, well…hungry, not performative.

• Mercy keeps effort relational.

• Purity keeps effort undivided.

• Peacemaking keeps effort communal.

• Persecution keeps effort resilient.

Without this posture, you can “do Christian things” and still be spiritually dehydrated, which makes us dizzy and gives us all a headache. 

But not all soil is easy all the time. There are droughts. God has a purpose for this as well. 

The dark-soil passages: trials as pressure on the root system

Scripture is consistent: trials aren’t a glitch; they’re a tool.

• Suffering produces endurance, character, and hope (Rom. 5:3–5).

• Trials produce steadfastness and maturity (Jas. 1:2–4).

• Tested faith becomes more precious than gold (1 Pet. 1:6–7).

• God strengthens believers for endurance and patience with joy (Col. 1:9–14).

Trials press on the root system. When the soil gets hard, roots either go deeper or dry out. The Beatitudes are the posture that keeps roots open in hard soil.

Two pictures to keep in your pocket

A lizard that turns into a stallion

In a grey-town allegory, a man’s cherished sin is pictured as a whispering lizard. When he finally consents for it to be killed, the lizard is transfigured into a strong, glorious creature—desire redeemed rather than merely managed.⁸ That’s what Peter’s supplements are for: not just restraint, but transformation.

Travel bread in a wasteland

In a long-road epic, weary travelers survive a nightmare journey on a small, unimpressive provision that gives strength far beyond its appearance.⁹ Peter’s list often feels like that: knowledge, self-control, steadfastness, brotherly affection. Not flashy. But sustaining. The kind of nutrition you notice most when the road is long.

A quick word to churches

Individuals have roots. Churches do too.

A church that refuses poverty of spirit will become proud in spreadsheets.

A church that won’t mourn will become an expert at PR spin.

A church that won’t make peace will become addicted to outrage.

A church that refuses persecution will trade faithfulness for applause.

If you want Spirit fruit, keep the roots open.

Conclusion: Do not fake your fruit—open your roots

If your Christian life feels unfruitful, the worst thing you can do is scream at the branches or decorate them with fake fruit.

Fruit is not produced by scolding. Fruit is produced by life (zoe´–the God kind of life).

So don’t just “try harder.” Try deeper.

Open your roots: let Jesus name your posture, let Peter name your nutrients, let the Spirit grow your fruit.

Because the goal isn’t a decorated dead tree.

The goal is a living one.

Endnotes

¹Willard, Dallas. The Divine Conspiracy: Rediscovering Our Hidden Life in God. Harper, 1997. pp.99-102. 

²GotQuestions.org, “How do we participate in the divine nature (2 Peter 1:4)?” https://www.gotquestions.org/participate-in-the-divine-nature.html 

³Kreeft, Peter. Back to Virtue: Traditional Moral Wisdom for Modern Moral Confusion. Ignatius Press, 1992, p. 59.

⁴Ibid, p. 71.

⁵Lewis, C. S. The Screwtape Letters. HarperOne, 2001, p. 161.

⁶Ibid, p.162.

⁷Willard, Dallas. The Great Omission: Reclaiming Jesus’s Essential Teachings on Discipleship. HarperOne, 2007, 61.

⁸Lewis, C. S. The Great Divorce: A Dream. HarperOne, 2001, p. 111.

⁹Tolkien, J.R.R. The Lord of the Rings Illustrated. William Morrow, 2021. pp.369-370. For those who do not have this volume, it is found in book 2, chapter 8 of The Fellowship of the Ring.