I fully believe what I wrote in the title. Here's one example:
The child, a first-grader named Levi, was in tears as he climbed aboard the school bus.“I asked him, ‘Hey, buddy, what’s wrong?’ and he told me he didn’t have any pajamas for pajama day,” Farrish said. “His school was having a special day where kids could wear their pajamas all day.”...After he dropped off Levi and about 40 other students at Engelhard Elementary School, Farrish decided to run a quick errand. He drove to a nearby Family Dollar store to pick out some new pajamas for Levi...Farrish took the pajamas over to the school and went into the front office to explain to an office assistant that he was Levi’s bus driver, and what had happened that morning.“She called for Levi [to come to the office] and when he came down the hallway and saw me, his face lit up,” he said. “He said, ‘Hey, you’re my bus driver!’”...“He was just glowing, he was so happy,” he said. “He gave me a hug, then he walked back to class, hugging those pajamas. I was in tears.”..“I don’t have kids, so I enjoy interacting with Levi and the other kids on the bus and hearing about what’s going on in their day,” he said. “My job is to get them to school safe, but I also hope I have a small impact on their lives.”
I also believe that most people are honest and that most people can be trusted. Those sentiments are probably also not widely shared.
They are shared by ME! In my long life, I remember only one person who cheated me. She was a friend who bought a used appliance from me, and never paid me.
ReplyDeleteI really enjoy your blog. Dot
Welcome, lurking Dot. Hope to hear more from you in the future. :-)
DeleteThe world is full of monsters. The world is full of good people. Both these statements are true, and the difference between them is a choice we can all make.
ReplyDeleteChoose wisely.
Really nice to hear about this. Thanks for the story.
ReplyDeleteDid you hear about the study that was done with lost wallets in cities around the world? People were surprisingly motivated to return them, especially if they had money in them. The more money, the more likely they were to be returned. People are a lot more honest than we think they are.
https://www.latimes.com/science/la-sci-people-are-honest-lost-wallets-experiment-20190620-story.html
I vaguely remember that experiment. But even without the validation, I'm sure that most people are honest.
DeleteI agree, the variation is how much trouble they'll go to. Weather they will drop a found wallet in a mailbox, try to locate the person's phone number and call, or actually take it to the house. Over the years I've heard of many "good deeds", like the pajamas, that only get publicized through the grapevine. Most were nice things but some left me shocked at size of the generosity.
ReplyDeleteOnly trusting people of the same color, religion or social strata is a huge mistake.
xoxoxoBruce
I agree overall. The unfortunate corollary, as someone who investigates fraud professionally: the biggest trope in employee fraud is the perpetrator is often the most trusted employee in the company. The takeaway is that we're often a poor judge of character, in both directions, and we should always question our assumptions. Don't assume ill intent, or place excessive trust in someone else (at least when it comes to safeguarding other people's assets). "Trust but verify."
ReplyDeleteI am the pastor of a small evangelical church. I had long subscribed to the doctrine of Original Sin.
ReplyDeleteUntil I had a son.
It all came together for me when I tried to pick up a small kitten. Not knowing any better it hissed, bit, and scratched. But I could not reasonably call it a "bad cat" or act as it is mean.
Likewise for children. We are born...neutral. Some like to claim that a child will be mean and lie, etc., so therefore Original Sin is a thing. But, no, that child just has not been trained yet in moral behavior. If after that they child is evil, that's a thing. But he/she wasn't BORN bad. (And I cannot find any scripture that conclusively indicates that we are born spiritually sinful. Adam and Eve had no problem sinning, and they certainly didn't have original sin.)
So I am always thrilled to find that there are good and decent people--even in prison, where I worked as a teacher. Some guys were just...decent. One inmate made money on the compound by creating original "Hallmark" cards. He came by one day (he was not enrolled in school) and asked from some manila folders. And so I learned of his gift. I found some old ones that were no longer in use and gave him some. This happened, I suppose, three or four times, with me giving him a total of, maybe 25 manila folders.
One day I asked how much it would cost to have him create a birthday card for my wife. He said something like "for you, it's free." A short time later, I was told that I couldn't give him manila folders nor accept a card from him, since, in some petty way, it was too close of a transaction between inmates and teachers. I told him as much and didn't think any thing of it.
Then, a few days later he shows up and hands me a BEAUTIFUL work of art as a birthday card for my wife. He knew that I couldn't buy it or give him more cards. So he gave it to me. I took it--and my wife loved it. (I figured that rejecting it would be a terrible injustice after he clearly spent plenty of time on something that he would not be rewarded for.)
That guy was in prison, but there was something beautiful and thoughtful inside. I cannot remember his name or face, but I do remember his kindness.
AaronS, I totally agree with you. I wonder if you can speculate from your position as a pastor as to WHY the concept of original sin was created. It's ;not a "modern" creation (see Psalm 51). It must have served some purpose in the early church - ?perhaps to encourage infant rather than adult baptism? I plan to eventually ask my (Episcopal) pastor, but I'd be interested in your take on the matter.
DeleteThe "original sin" is being born into some version of a civilizational experience; that is, born into an increasingly exploitative relationship with humans, animals and the environment. As such, we are both beneficiaries and perpetrators of a system we didn't choose, but for which we are morally responsible. No easy subject. As to whether we're "good people": We can certainly find goodness, but we can't escape who we are in the aggregate and what bearing that has on the question. That is, if we're good, how do we explain this: 1) The worldwide accumulation of nuclear weapons, poised for launch at the press of a button. 2) The impending collapse of Earth’s biosphere. 3) At least a billion of Earth’s citizens living in nightmarish poverty. 4) Perennial conventional war. 5) 30 billion animals locked into a suffering-inflicting food system, along with millions of abused animals, captured or bred for human amusement or experimentation.
ReplyDeleteAlso, if Original Sin weren't a thing, we wouldn't need a Savior to absolve us from it either, which would sort of undermine the whole premise of Christianity.
Delete?? without Original Sin, humans would still accumulate sins as soon as they are able to express/experience anger, covetousness, lechery etc - so absolution, forgiveness, grace etc would still be needed. It's just the original (innate, inborn, from-the-womb) sin I find incomprehensible.
DeleteTrue. But in some Christian denominations (I believe Calvinism is one of them, but I'd have to look it up), the fact that people are capable of sinning in life is the direct result of Original Sin. According to that view, living a life full of good deeds doesn't help in the slightest against you being an innate sinner; the only way to fix that is by accepting Christ as your Savior.
DeleteWith regard to your second sentence, I think the doctrine of virtually every Protestant religion is that good deeds don't buy you access to heaven. That's been true at least since Martin Luther nailed his manifesto to the church doors at Wittenburg, denouncing the sale of indulgences by Catholics, and thus jump-starting the Reformation.
DeleteOriginal Sin (capital letters) is a theological construct which depends on a faith-based premise. That is, we're born in an "unsaved" state and require some means of redemption, without which we do not have eternal salvation. As a non-believer I find the concept useful as a metaphor. If you take the supernatural out of Genesis, what's the story about? Adam and Eve are cast out of the Garden and into a life of agricultural toil. I read that to mean cast out of a foraging, primitive existence, into the life of the civilized human. A less innocent experience, where the "knowledge of good and evil" makes good and evil a human responsibility. We are born outcasts, but empowered with a kind of control, that is "dominion." In my (pessimistic) opinion, this is not going well. I envy those with faith in a God who makes all this right, in the end. In my view, humanity is better described as an exclusively biological phenomenon, a cancer-like species with the power to multiply suffering, while marginalizing (externalizing) consequences in an experiential sense--something impossible in an eco-system and far less possible, than in our current moment, in any primitive existence. There's great power in this externalization of suffering , and huge potential for folly; that is, as our relationship with suffering becomes ever more functionally "autistic." Said differently, the departure from the Garden was a "technological moment" where our species became masters of innovation and this led to longer and longer feedback loops on the experience of suffering resulting from our actions, to the point that suffering is not "heard" at all; this "breakdown in communication" increasingly impoverishes our decision making processes. This is the "fallen" state. My way of life is integral to creating all this, but with very little direct knowledge of the relationship between that way of life and the "suffering footprint" I'm creating: 1) The worldwide accumulation of nuclear weapons, poised for launch at the press of a button. 2) The impending collapse of Earth’s biosphere. 3) At least a billion of Earth’s citizens living in nightmarish poverty. 4) Perennial conventional war. 5) 30 billion animals locked into a suffering-inflicting food system, along with millions of abused animals, captured or bred for human amusement or experimentation.
DeleteGreat feel good story. We need more of these.
ReplyDeleteSadly, so many schools have "pajama day" or other special "dress this way" days that exclude children like this young man. Privilege looks like having pajamas you can wear in public, or at all.
ReplyDeleteI was reminded of this yesterday when my truck broke down and for the first time in years no cell phone... and pouring rain. After 15 minutes of trying to decide and hoping the rain would let up a woman in a car pulls up like she was expecting me to move. She got out and asked if I needed help and I explained my dilemma. She fetched her phone , called AAA for me and left. Came back a half hour later with a PB&J sandwich, 2 Clementines, a ziploc with chips, a 7½ oz Coke and 7½ oz ginger ale, a napkin, and a Philadelphia magazine.
ReplyDeleteLater she came back and offered her bathroom, then later again to tell me she got a text the truck was 10 minutes away. There are good people out there, this one is now on my Christmas card list.
xoxoxoBruce