Sordid stumblings become glorious gain
Four dynamos driving the human race
The fact that bad things happen to good people is a puzzle, to be sure. But perhaps even more perplexing is the reality that good things sometimes happen for bad reasons; that even the most profane impulse can have positive effects. Those who wrestle with the question of why impure motives can produce apparently beneficial results will soon observe that human behavior is often triggered by motives quite unrelated to the particular activity.
Advertisers understand these dynamics well. A popular beer commercial airing during the Winter Olympics shows the unlikely development of an impromptu hockey game on a bustling downtown street. Busy professionals loosen their ties, drop their briefcases and become excited and involved as players and spectators. The ad has nothing to with a beverage. Nonetheless, imbuing urban sophisticates with the exuberance of innocent sport is an attitude the advertiser expects viewers to associate with a particular brand of beer. Apparently it works.
So what are the triggers that propel human activity? Money, sex, power and God-consciousness leap readily to mind, and much of our behavior is shaped by a complicated intermingling of all four. All are basic to our survival, and each embraces a great capacity for both good and evil.
For the love of money
Everybody wants money, and people will do just about anything to have it. In and of itself, money is both necessary and neutral. While Christian tradition teaches that producing wealth is a good thing, it also says that the love of money is at the root of all kinds of evil. Naked displays of greed for money are not uncommon, such as the poor souls who pour their savings into VLTs and the proprieters who are eager to leech it from them in increasingly sophisticated ways. Church groups and others say this is immoral.
But what about the lotteries in your community (the hospital that must finance a new cancer treatment centre; the orchestra that needs subsidies to perform Bach and Handel) that offer a house, luxury car or some other extravagant prize to the holder of the lucky $100 ticket? Isn’t it also immoral that people must be bribed to support good things? Is it genuine good when the money arrives by this route?
The human sex drive also produces a motley assortment of mixed motives. Christian tradition has a clear ethic relating to sexuality (fidelity in marriage; chastity otherwise). However, the sexual impulse leads in many other directions as well and exerts an influence on human behavior that provides endless fodder for comedians and ethicists alike.
What good can come of sexual deviance? Well, a recent news item reported that the financial success of the on-line pornography industry is "driving the development of technology as consumers of adult materials demand better monitors, more powerful microprocessors and faster internet access speeds." Soon these technologies will be put to a wide variety of infinitely more beneficial uses. Sordid sources notwithstanding, good happens. Strange.
Similarly, the human urge to wield power carries mixed blessings. The desire to conquer and the will to wage war spurs the kind of research that later finds a bevy of benign civilian applications. Technology developed to track enemy weapons deployments, for example, is now being adapted to detect breast cancer in women. And then there is our sense of the Divine, which has generated mission and humanitarian activity that heaven alone can calculate. This religious impulse is part and parcel of human existence–a force that can animate a Mother Teresa or a Jim Jones, a Billy Graham or a Shirley MacLaine.
All of which demonstrates the complexity of human behavior and the extent of God’s grace. Humans have a huge credibility and performance gap to explain. The difference between what we say we will do and what we actually end up doing is often as large as the breach between our real and imagined motives. Most people want to do good even when they allow themselves to be driven by unholy impulse. And we can easily deceive ourselves into thinking we had pure motives all along. The person whose charitable donation was prompted by the promise of a tax deduction basks in the glow of acclaim for his generosity.
God intervenes
The good news is that God intervenes. He created people in his own image, put them into a good place and gave them good things to do. Even if that place is now dreadfully defiled and those vocations sadly compromised, God’s Spirit remains active, doing damage control and reducing the impact of evil.
The ultimate incentive is almost beyond us. Human beings can act for many good reasons (e.g. to respond to need, for good rewards, because we want to serve God), but the purest motivation is simply that God’s love compels us (2 Cor. 5:14; 1 John 4:10). It’s a love that reaches so far that it sometimes turns our sordid stumblings into glorious gain.
Doug
Koop
Editor
