In Reply to: meaningless acts of kindness.. posted by ray on August 19, 2004 at 19:43:29:
Ray, What I am saying is that kindness, having a meaningful life or a life with a purpose, etc. are traits that are not owned by any religion or people that have no religion. It may be hard for you to understand that people have a conscience whether they are Christian or not. There are many atheists in history who have lived and added to their societies via literature, science, humanitarian acts of kindness whether on a large scale or just in how they conduct themselves personally. I have told this story before, but I remember these two communists collecting money for a cause at a tram station in Sweden. I was 8 1/2 mos. pregnant and had two toddlers with me and had to go out litnessing. It was raining and I was sent out, as usual, expected to raise the money at the tram station to get to the litnessing spot to meet the lit team. Well, because of the rain, no one slowed down to take lit and I just got real wet, discouraged and overwhelmed. They saw this and came over and gave me the money for the fare. The Christian family leaders would not do that. But the communists did. They did it without demanding I be like them. They did not care for the content of the letters I was trying to distribute at all, but they were concerned about me.
I have met Christians that are that way too. But religion is not necessary to have a conscience or be a caring person. I had no religion before I met the family and I did a lot of volunteer work with animals. I also anonymously gave a large share of my meager money when I had some to a charitable cause. After the family, when I worked with kids, I would go out of my way to do things to help them with building their self-esteem and treated them as people and not objects. I could have gotten away with the latter, but it would have gone against my conscience and my values.
I did lots of extras with them like art groups etc. And when they were hospitalized, I made sure that if they had a birthday that it was celebrated. I did those things because I wanted to. I enjoyed doing it. I did the same with hospitalized adults. I remember one teen girl that came in the hospital crawling with lice. She was so psychotic that she could not wash her hair with the prescribed treatment. No one wanted to and she sat in misery. I volunteered to because I could at least think empathically about what it must feel like to be in such discomfort and not be capable of doing anything about it. I also conditioned her hair and split some mats that had formed and I found her some decent clothes. SOME of the "Christian" nurses did not want to touch her and often laughed and ridiculed the sick people.
I don't think I would have to do "good" things to be okay, but I liked seeing someone get better or feel better.
Why do you think there has to be an eternal reward or greater purpose to be kind?
For that matter, many Christians believe that dogs die and that is it. But even dogs are loyal to people and will defend them even when it puts their own life in peril. I believe animals are spiritual beings also. What do you think?