Goodness

Author Lyall Watson, writing about the culture and habits of pigs, concludes that when young pigs play it is voluntary, random, and stimulated by novelty. “Jumping where there is nothing to jump over, running without going anywhere, fleeing when there is no enemy to flee from--all these are actions that lack any obvious function. They appear to be undertaken purely for pleasure.” Young wild boars chase windfall apples as readily as kittens chase balls of wool.

We call such behavior “play” and find no difficulty in recognizing it when we see it. It is easy to distinguish. An animal involved in play-fleeing or play-fighting looks very different from one seriously occupied in flight or fight. But it would be wrong to regard play just as something opposed to work. It is far more important than that.

Play is voluntary. You can’t make someone play or legislate play into being. A pig wearing a silly hat and jumping through a hoop isn’t playing. Play implies, pleasure, fun, and a definite lack of constraint. It’s something that comes more naturally to the young than it does to adults.

Play is almost certainly a complex collection of activities that are not just frivolous. The amount of time spent on it by young animals suggests that it is important; and a lack of it may impair the acquisition of vital social abilities. Play seems to be necessary for a healthy brain in pigs as well as people.

Are you a good person? There’s an easy way to tell, according to the Internet at least. It’s based on what you do with a shopping cart when you are done with it. If you put it in the designated shopping cart collection area in the parking lot, you’re good. If you leave it to drift off into parking spots, you’re bad.

The test has been discussed on Reddit and Twitter. On Reddit, a user laid out a very detailed description of the theory that essentially claims:

The shopping cart is what determines whether a person is a good or bad member of society. Objectively, the correct action to take is to put the shopping cart where it’s supposed to go. It’s not illegal to abandon the cart, so you can do that without consequence. … Therefore the shopping cart presents itself as the apex example of whether a person will do what is right without being forced to do it. No one will punish you … or fine you … you gain nothing by returning the shopping cart. You must return the shopping cart because it is the right thing to do.

Another said:

For a date you need to take them to a restaurant and do the waiter test & then later go to the store with them & do the shopping cart test.

Finally,

The only way to truly know a person’s character, is to secretly follow them to the grocery store and watch what they do with the cart when they’re done.

You can view the Reddit thread here.

Possible Preaching Angle:

God also tests our character, but instead of the shopping cart test, God uses other measures to examine us: The test of love (1 Cor. 13), the test of the fruits of the Spirit (Gal. 5:22-23), the test of Christlikeness (Rom. 8:29), the stress test (1 Pet. 1:7), and others.

Robert Coles, a former professor at Harvard published an article titled “The Disparity Between Intellect and Character.” The piece was about “the task of connecting intellect to character.” He adds, “This task is daunting.”

His essay was occasioned by an encounter with one of his students over the moral insensitivity—is it hard for him to say “immoral behavior of other students, some of the best and brightest at Harvard.” This student was a young woman of “a Midwestern, working class background” where, as is well known, things like “right answers” and “ideology” remain strong. She cleaned student rooms to help pay her way through the university.

Again and again, she reported to Coles, people who were in classes with her treated her ungraciously because of her lower economic position, without simple courtesy and respect, and often were rude and sometimes crude to her. She was repeatedly propositioned for sex by one young student in particular as she went about her work. He was a man with whom she had had two “moral reasoning” courses, in which he excelled and received the highest of grades.

This pattern of treatment led her to quit her job and leave school—and to have something like an exit interview with Coles. She reviewed not only the behavior of her fellow students, but also the long list of highly educated people who have perpetrated the atrocities for which the twentieth century is famous. She concluded by saying to him, “I’ve been taking all these philosophy courses, and we talk about what’s true, what’s important, what’s good. Well, how do you teach people to be good? What’s the point of knowing good if you don’t keep trying to become a good person?”

Joel Prusak was an employee at the ice cream chain Dairy Queen. One day, as he was serving customers their food, he noticed that a blind man had dropped a twenty-dollar bill on the floor. A lady standing in line quietly bent down and put the twenty dollars into her own pocket. Young Joey Prusak approached the lady, asking her to give the twenty-dollar bill back to the blind man. She refused, quite aggressively, claiming it was her own. And then Joey did something very generous. Quietly, he opened up his own wallet and handed the blind man a twenty-dollar bill of his own. The man took the money gratefully, and the Dairy Queen resumed normal business.

A customer in line observed the whole episode and sent an e-mail to the Dairy Queen management, informing them of Joey's act of generosity. The DQ management then posted about it on Facebook, and the event went viral. A couple of days later, Joey received a call from the billionaire Warren Buffet, a big investor in Dairy Queen. He thanked Joey for showing such integrity and asked him to come to the next Dairy Queen investors' meeting. As Joey was an employee and representative of Dairy Queen, Buffet wanted him to be there as an integral part of the fabric of the organization.

Joey's act of generosity inspired thousands of people to believe that they, too, could do something small to impact the world for good. It was a small act—with a huge impact. And so it is with God. He takes our small acts of obedience or kindness or goodness and multiplies them for his good, and ours. So don't wait until you can do big things; start small. Sometimes small seeds grow into large trees, and sometimes they fail to thrive.

An old joke. A letter to a neighbor reads:

Dear Frank. We've been neighbors for six tumultuous years. When you borrowed my tiller, you returned it in pieces. When I was sick, you blasted rap music. And when your dog went to the bathroom all over my lawn, you laughed. I could go on, but I'm certainly not one to hold grudges. So I am writing this letter to tell you that your house is on fire. Cordially, Bob

Ever since the Golden Gate Bridge opened in 1937, people have been jumping off it to their deaths, about 1,200 to date. After eight decades of debate, the board of the Golden Gate Bridge, Highway and Transportation District approved funds last month to a "suicide barrier"—a steel-cable safety net that will run the east and west lengths of the bridge—at a cost of $76 million.

The non-profit Bridge Rail Foundation has one simple goal—to install a safety net on the Golden Gate Bridge and stop the suicides. Paul Muller, a spokesman for the organization, expressed what motivates them to save lives: "It's important to understand the value of the lives lost. Those who jump are often doctors, lawyers, teachers, people who can contribute a great deal to society. Saving them means adding to our community."

Update: As of January 1, 2024, the Golden Gate Bridge now has a continuous physical suicide barrier installed the full length of the 1.7-mile span. The suicide deterrent system, also known as the net, has been installed on the east and west sides of approximately 95% of the Bridge. In some areas of the Bridge, due to ongoing construction or design factors, vertical fencing is in place instead of or in addition to the net.

Possible Preaching Angles: Abortion; National Sanctity of Life Sunday—Paul Muller's quote also applies perfectly to the lives of the unborn, especially these two lines: "It's important to understand the value of the lives lost … Saving them means adding to our community."

The famous atheist Richard Dawkins once claimed, "[The universe] has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference." The late Stephen Jay Gould described human life as "a momentary cosmic accident." According to these atheistic scientists we are just complex organisms programmed by selfish genes to act purely out of self-interest.

But when Philip Yancey went to visit Newtown, Connecticut shortly after the tragic school shooting that left 26 dead, he said, "The New Atheists' assumptions [about human life] rang all the more hollow." Yancey asked people impacted by the tragedy, "Is that what you've experienced?" One Newtown survivor told Yancey:

I have seen an outpouring of grief, compassion, and generosity—not blind, pitiless indifference. I've seen acts of selflessness, not selfishness: in the school staff who sacrificed their lives to save children, in the sympathetic response of a community and a nation. I've seen demonstrated a deep belief that the people who died mattered, that something of inestimable worth was snuffed out on December 14.

Yancey adds:

In the midst of trauma even a sternly secular culture recognizes the worth of individual human beings, a carryover from the Christian belief that each one reflects God's image. I recalled that after September 11, 2001, the New York Times committed to running an obituary to honor each one of the three thousand people who died in the World Trade Center attacks, as if they mattered and were not cosmic accidents in a universe of pitiless indifference.

In 2007, pro baseball pitcher Matt White had an aunt who had been struggling for years to make ends. When her health started to decline, she was forced to sell her fifty acres of property to pay for health care. As an act of kindness, Matt traveled to Massachusettes and bought the land from his aunt for the appraised value of $50,000. While exploring the land to see about building a house, he discovered outcroppings of stone ledges.

Matt contracted a geologist, who surveyed the land and informed him the stone was actually Goshen stone, a type of mica estimated to be about 400 million years old. This type of stone is useful for sidewalks, patios, and landscapes. At the time it sold for $100 a ton … and Matt White had about 24 million tons on the land. The appraised value on the surface was $50,000, but some experts estimated that the land was possibly worth up to $2 billion. The news prompted some of White's teammates to nickname him "The Billionaire." During his first year of operation, White's family-run business made $600,000. According to the official website for White's company, Swift River Stone, even years later, sales appear to remain steady.

Possible Preaching Angles: (1) The value of Christ—he is the rejected stone that becomes the chief Cornerstone; (2) The value of people made in God's image—Jesus looked beyond the surface appearance and saw the great value of people made in God's image. As the church, we must also see the dignity and value beneath the surface of the people around us.

A poor community in Paraguay has formed an amazing orchestra that plays instruments created from recycled trash. The young musicians come from the city of Cateura, a slum that's built on a landfill. More than 1500 tons of trash gets dumped into the landfill every day. About 1,000 residents make their living by picking through the trash with long hooks called ganchos (hence the garbage pickers are called gancheros).

Favio Chavez, a young professional and musician, and Luis Szaran, a music conductor, have infused the landfill with warmth, dignity, and beauty. When Chavez saw the desperate poverty and dire health conditions at the landfill, he opened a tiny music school. At first Chavez loaned out his complete supply of five instruments, but he quickly had too many students. So Chavez asked one of the trash-pickers, Nicolas Gomez, to make some instruments from recycled materials to keep the younger kids occupied.

Eventually the students learned to play a small orchestra of miraculously redeemed instruments: a cello made out of an oil can and old cooking tools, a flute made from tin cans, a drum set that uses X-rays as the skins, bottle caps that serve as the keys for a saxophone, a double bass constructed out of chemical cans, and a violin made from a battered aluminum salad bowl and strings tuned with forks. The "Recycled Orchestra" plays classical music, Paraguayan folk tunes, and even a few rock pieces. (Click here to watch a video overview of the Landfill Harmonic.)

Chavez claims that this amazing story has taught him at least one profound lesson: "People realize that we shouldn't throw away trash carelessly. Well, we shouldn't throw away people either."

Possible Preaching Angles: (1) Redemption—Christ has lifted us from a spiritual landfill, bringing beauty out of our brokenness. (2) Community—Christ has redeemed all of us from a spiritual landfill, and like the instruments in this story, he has brought us together into a orchestra that plays beautiful music. (3) Dignity, Self-worth—God has stamped his image on every person—even those the world considers "trash."

Thousands of years ago the Bible declared that every human being is "fearfully and wonderfully made." Now modern science is finally realizing the fear and wonder of our creation.

Consider this example: Your body is made up of about one hundred, million, million cells. Each of these cells has a complete set of instructions about how to make your cells and your cells' components. This set of instructions is called the human genome.

Your genome is packed with at least four million gene switches that reside in bits of DNA. For years, scientists thought that many of these bits of DNA were useless. In the 1970s, Francis Crick, the co-discoverer of DNA's structure, suspected it was all "little better than junk." The phrase "junk DNA" has haunted human genetics ever since. In the early 2000s, scientists still believed that perhaps 97 percent of what's called "the sequence of bases" in human DNA had no apparent function.

But in September, 2012, a team of 440 scientists from 32 labs around the world made a startling discovery: Your "junk DNA" really isn't junky after all. As these scientists delved further into "the junk," they discovered a complex system that controls genes. Apparently, so far these scientists have determined that 80 percent of this DNA is active and needed. It turns out that what was called "junk" is now called a "hidden treasure"—a treasure that plays a critical role in controlling how cells, organs, and other tissues behave.

Editor's Note: The following illustration could be used as a simple but powerful object lesson. Discount or thrift stores usually carry plenty of cheap vases. The "attractive" vase in the object lesson below could even be made out of plastic; it just has to look "pretty." You can buy an older, ugly vase for the second part of this object lesson. And if it doesn't look "broken" enough, beat it up with a hammer until it looks like the cracked vessel Paul mentions in 2 Corinthians 4:7.

According to Christian counselor Julie Smith Lowe, we must form an accurate self-image based on God's Word, not our culture. Lowe uses the image of two vases—a beautifully painted vase and a cracked, broken vase—to teach a powerful lesson about our identity in Christ. She writes,

Imagine the first vase is beautiful, and it sits perched on a shelf. Its main purpose is to look attractive. In the same way, we also want to look attractive and impressive. We want people to be drawn to our external appearance. We want the world to look at us and say, "Look how successful, beautiful, strong, or smart you are!"

But the Bible paints a different picture. Instead of being a beautiful vase, let's consider a very different vase—a dirty, cracked, ordinary vase. Just like us, this vase also has flaws—struggles, weaknesses, and imperfections. In many ways, this vase doesn't impress us with its appearance. As a matter of fact, it might even seem "weak," broken, and flawed. But there's good news: let's imagine there's a treasure in this vase. And the only way you can see the treasure is when it shines through the cracks and the flaws. In the same way, there's a treasure in those who follow Christ—Christ himself is the treasure that resides in us, the cracked vessel. Christ brings value and meaning to us.

Unfortunately, we often want to hide our weaknesses. We want to rely on our external appearance and performance. So any time we find a crack or hole, we desperately grab for something to try and hide our weaknesses and shortcomings. But of course our external adorning won't last. Eventually it will always fade and then break. Our only hope is to focus on the treasure within us—the presence of Jesus himself.

Alexander Tsiaras, a mathematician and visual artist, uses special visualization software to explore the unseen human body. In a TED lecture, he explained how his technology has enabled him to scan the development of the fetus from conception to birth. Although we hear nothing about his faith or his views on abortion, throughout the lecture Tsiaras refers to what he calls the "marvel" and the "miracle" of an unborn baby's development. Tsiaras highlights the miracle of life with the following examples:

• At 44 days the fetus has become "something that you can recognize."
• At nine weeks it "is really like a kind of little human being."
• At 25-28 days, the baby's heart, which resembles a "magnificent origami," is developing at a rate of one million cells per second.
• At 32 days the arms and hands are developing.
• Within five weeks you can start to see the heart's early atrium and ventricles. A week later the baby's heart is actually becoming mature.
• At 52 days the retina, nose, and fingers are developing.
• By the time the fetus is full-term, it has 60,000 miles of vessels inside its body—although only one mile of vessels are visible. The other 59,999 miles of vessels are quietly working to bring nutrients and dispose of waste.
• Tsiaras calls a pregnant woman's body a "walking immunological cardiovascular system that … can actually nurture and treat this child with the kind of marvel that is beyond our comprehension."

Tsiaras summarizes his talk by saying,

The complexity of these [facts about human development], the mathematic models of how these are indeed done are beyond human comprehension. Even though I am a mathematician, I look at this with marvel: How do these instruction sets not make mistakes as they build what is us? It's a mystery; it's magic; it's divinity …. [It's] beyond any comprehension of any existing mathematics today.

In his article titled "The Problem of Goodness," Chuck Colson notes that at particular times (like the Christmas season) good deeds seem to flourish. For instance, Colson writes, "The same person who cut you off in traffic last month may be ladling soup at the local homeless shelter … . our favorite Christmas movies and stories are rife with examples of generosity." Colson wrestles with the question of what drives us to do good deeds, especially for the less-fortunate.

Then he shares a personal example:

I was struck by this when attending a special-needs basketball game for my autistic grandson, Max. He played alongside about 30 children who suffered autism, Down syndrome, cerebral palsy, and other conditions. The gym was filled not just with parents, but with volunteers and coaches who donated their time for these kids on a regular basis. But why are they doing this?

Colson contends that Darwin's theory of natural selection can't explain why we're kind to others with special needs. "According to this theory, so-called weaker ones like these children would have been eliminated." Instead, Colson notes,

Christians understand that while all of us are born with the capacity to selfishness and cruelty, we are also capable of caring for others. Because we are created in the image of God, we not only don't have to struggle against our neighbors for survival, we can love them and even willingly die for them.

In 2009, a new billboard in downtown Chicago got everyone's attention, stirring some controversy. In big letters it asked: "Are you good without God? Millions are." It was put up by an organization called the Chicago Coalition of Reason. According to an article about the billboard in the Chicago Tribune, the Coalition's coordinator said "the billboard aims to hearten humanists, atheists, and agnostics who might feel isolated or misunderstood in their quest for alternatives to religious worldviews."

The billboard's question does beg for answer: Can a person who rejects God's very existence, let alone his authority, do good? Well, of course! They can be honest and kind, pay their taxes, give money to the poor. But from a Christian point of view, that misses the point.

It makes me think of the Tin Man in The Wizard of Oz. Remember him? The Tin Man's quest was to find a heart. When he finally came face-to-face with the Wizard, the Wizard warned the Tin Man that hearts can be broken. The Tin Man replies, "But I still want one." And do you remember what the Wizard said next? "Back where I come from," he said, "there are men who do nothing all day but good deeds. They are called … good-deed-doers. And their hearts are no bigger than yours, but they have one thing you haven't got."

God would say something similar to the "good without God" billboard people. He would say, "When Christians do good deeds properly, their hearts are no bigger than yours, But they have one thing you haven't got." That one thing is found in Ephesians 2:10: "For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do."

Joe Stowell writes in “Jesus Nation”:

Every day there are opportunities for each of us to reach out to others to demonstrate the excellencies of Jesus. There are family members, colleagues at work, and strangers that happen to intersect the trajectory of our lives who are waiting to be touched by a [follower of Jesus]. In fact, my recommendation is that you plan to commit one intentional act of [goodness] every day just to stay in shape.

It was six o'clock in the morning, and I had just finished my early run. As I passed the local Starbucks, I decided to stop in and get a couple cups of our favorite lattes and take them home to [my wife], who would be waking up. Since the café had just opened, there was only one other person in line in front of me. But it wasn't your ordinary wait-in-line-for-coffee drill. The guy in front of me was in a tense argument with the clerk. In loud and no uncertain terms, the customer was complaining that all he wanted was the copy of the New York Times that he was holding in one hand while he was waving a fifty-dollar bill in the other. The fight was over the fact that the clerk did not have enough change yet to break the fifty-dollar bill, which made it impossible for him to sell the paper.

It dawned on me that this was an early morning opportunity to commit one intentional act of [goodness] by demonstrating the excellence of the generous spirit of Jesus. So I said to the clerk, "Hey, put the paper on my bill; I'll buy it for him." This immediately defused the tension, and the grateful New York Times guy walked away saying, "Thanks a lot. All I have is yours!" Which evidently did not include the fifty-dollar bill.

To my surprise, when the barista handed me my coffee, he said, "Mister, that was a really nice thing for you to do. This world would be a lot better place to live if more people were like you." What he didn't know was that if he really knew me, he probably wouldn't say that.

His comments caught me totally off guard, and I knew that I could say something at that point that would point the glory upward…but nothing came. So I made some self-deprecating remark and walked out, haunted that I had missed a great opportunity to glorify God. As I was walking down the sidewalk, it came to me. I should have said, "Well, this world would not be a better place if more people were like me. But it would be a better place if more people were like Jesus, because he taught me how to do that."

I turned around to go back and tell him that, only to remember that by the time I left there was a line waiting for coffee. It didn't seem to me that it would be a great idea to break into the line and make a religious speech. My only conclusion was the thought that I was wearing my Moody Bible Institute hat. So I prayed that he would have noticed my hat. That he would always remember that Bible people do things like that, and that the world would be a better place if there were more Bible people around.

Here's a little experiment: start a sentence with the words "I believe…," and then finish it with something deeply heartfelt. It is impossible to do without feeling uplifted and stirred.

The need to declare our deeply held beliefs is an irrepressible aspect of being human. In the act of defining what we believe, we define ourselves. I am one who can discern what is true and real and noble and bind myself to it. I believe. One of the most flattering things we can do is ask others their opinion, because what they believe matters. …

To be is to believe. One important question to ask myself is, what do I really believe, and what do I think I'm supposed to believe?

In the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy, Sam is trying to encourage Frodo not to give up. He reminds Frodo that all the great stories are about characters who keep going when it seems too hard. They all find something to hang on to. "And what about us?" Frodo asks. "What do we have to hang on to?" Sam responds, "That there's good in the world. And it's worth fighting for."

That one line undid me. I found myself all choked up without even knowing why. I realized later what it was about those words that moved me so: I believed them without trying. Often—partly because of my job—there are statements that I think I should believe or that I want to believe. Sometimes, because I get paid or applauded for affirming those beliefs, I wonder if I really believe anything at all or if I just talk myself into it because I get rewarded. But my heart said yes with unforced passion to this belief: there is good in the world, and it is worth fighting for.

I believe.