The Unpopular Work of Doing Good

I learned early on that approval is a slippery thing. You can do everything right, hold the door, tell the truth, show up on time, help when it costs you something—and still end up on someone’s bad side.

For a long time, that bothered me more than I care to admit. I thought goodness was supposed to act like a receipt: you do the right thing, and the world stamps PAID and sends you on your way with a smile.

Turns out, that’s not how it works.

I was thinking about this the other morning, standing in line at the grocery store, where the self-checkout clerk snapped at the woman ahead of me for moving too slowly. The woman apologized, flustered, and shuffled aside.

I smiled and told her it was no problem, that mornings can be rough. She smiled as she pushed her cart towards the door.

That’s when the thought hit me, one that has hit me before but never quite stuck. Jesus was perfect, not “pretty good on most days,” but perfect-perfect.

And still, people hated him, mocked him, doubted him, tried to trap him, shouted him down, and ultimately demanded his death. If perfection didn’t earn universal approval, what made me think decency ever would?

I don’t say that lightly or dramatically. It’s just a plain observation.

If the standard we’re chasing is getting liked, we’ve picked a losing game. But, if the standard is doing ‘good’ anyway, that’s a different story entirely.

I used to confuse the two. I thought doing good was supposed to feel good all the time, that it would come with nods of recognition, quiet praise, maybe even gratitude.

Sometimes it does. Often, it doesn’t.

Sometimes it comes with suspicion, resentment, and outright hostility. People don’t always like being reminded, by your actions or words, that another way of living exists.

There was a season in my life when I volunteered regularly, quietly, without posting about it or mentioning it unless asked. I assumed that was the right way, but word got around anyway, and suddenly I was “showing off,” “trying to look holy,” or “thinking I was better than everyone else.”

None of those things was true, but the accusations hurt all the same. I remember sitting in my truck one afternoon, hands on the steering wheel, wondering if it was worth the effort to keep going.

That’s when I thought again of Jesus, teaching, healing, feeding people, and being accused of being a fraud, troublemaker, and a threat. It reframed the whole thing for me.

The problem wasn’t the good being done, it was the discomfort it caused in others. That is the thing about goodness; it has a way of exposing things like fear, guilt, pride, and the other things that people would rather keep hidden.

So I made a quiet decision. I would stop auditing the reactions, stop asking, “How did that land?” “Did they like me?” “Did I do it right enough to be appreciated?”

Instead, I would ask only one thing, and that was of myself: “Was I doing good for others?”

That didn’t make things easier overnight. I still wince when my kindness gets met with contempt.

I still feel the urge to explain myself, to defend my motives, to smooth things over so everyone feels comfortable, but I’ve learned that comfort is not the goal and that love isn’t a popularity contest. Integrity doesn’t come with a comment section.

If even perfection got booed, then my imperfect attempts at goodness don’t need a standing ovation to be valid. They only need to be sincere.

So now, when someone rolls their eyes or questions my intentions or decides I’m the villain in a story I didn’t know I was part of, I remind myself of that old, inconvenient truth. You can be doing the right thing and still end up disliked.

You can be helping and still misunderstood. You can be faithful to what you believe is good and still walk away empty-handed.

And that’s okay, because the measure was never applause, approval, or being liked. It was goodness itself, quiet, stubborn, and unbothered by the crowd.