“No good deed goes unpunished.” — Clare Booth Luce
Yesterday, I had a series of experiences that, upon reflection, seemed connected like beads on a thread:
• My niece related to me a story about an incident that had just occurred at a gas station, during which a man she described as “looking clean cut,” asked her to let him pay for her gas on his credit card in exchange for cash, because he needed a few dollars to tide him over and didn’t have anything left in his bank account. He even offered to charge her only half the cost of the gas. Thinking she was helping someone in a bind, she paid him $20 for $23 worth of gas. Immediately after leaving, she realized that the credit card was probably stolen.
• Along with my niece, I attended a two-hour training session for the upcoming Homeless Stand-Down, the theme of which was the essential humanity of both guests and volunteers at the stand-down, and our need to recognize this in extending the hand of charity.
• I took my young daughter and her friend to a movie. When we took our seats, we were alone in the theater. Immediately after we sat down, a somewhat unkempt older man entered, crossed in front of us, and sat next to me. I stayed put, but was very uncomfortable. A few moments later, he got up, crossed in front of us again, and left the theater for a few moments before returning and choosing a seat next to my daughter. I then immediately got up and moved the girls to a spot on the aisle in another part of the theater, and watched the entrance until two other families arrived, before settling in to watch the movie.
It was clear to me that these experiences were all related, but I’m still trying to work out the message.
For one thing, there’s the theme of outward appearances, and how our pre-conceived ideas about people affect our choices. The man at the gas station “looked” honest to my niece, and so she did as she was asked. She chose to do that in spite of the fact that her education in accounting has been preparing her to detect and investigate fraud. I suspect that the fact that she was on her way to the training session helped to put her in the frame of mind to give him the money. Also, she is young, and was raised in a rural area, and has seldom been approached by anyone directly appealing to her for money. Lacking a history of negative experiences, she simply responded to the first prompting of her conscience. Immediately after she did, her conscience pricked her for whatever harm might be caused if the card was used illegally.
In contrast, the man in the movie theater “looked” creepy to me. However, the training session had just sensitized me to try to see the man’s soul, whatever my aversion to his outward appearance, and not to hurt his feelings by moving away. On the other hand, I’d had a similar incident fifteen years ago in which I found myself alone on a subway car with a man. In that incident, I had also wanted to move away or leave the car, but had convinced myself that this was merely an uncharitable impulse based on the man’s appearance. The subway man subsequently exposed himself and began masturbating, and I fled. When the man in the theater returned and chose a seat near my daughter, any confusion I had about how to respond to the situation was cleared right up. Suddenly, I didn’t care at all about hurting his feelings.
My niece and I both initially wanted to do the generous (or, in my case, at least the tolerant) thing. But neither of us came away from our experiences satisfied that we really would have done good by trying to be nice.
As I think this over and consider what I might have done differently, I have also thought about the scriptural passages that were read at yesterday’s Mass, and about the content of the stand-down training. To me, the passages from Isaiah (58:7-10) and Matthew (5:13-16), and even the more specific message of the stand-down training directed both of us toward following our more generous impulses, without accounting for how the “good” that we do toward one person could result in bad being done toward someone else.
In both situations, there was a possible third party — the person from whom the credit card may have been stolen, and my little daughter and her friend. I think neither my niece nor I considered these third parties as we made our initial estimation of the possible good-to-possible harm ratio. It was only when we accounted for them that we thought we saw more clearly what action we should have taken.
Unfortunately, this kind of thinking also leads to no good. I suspect that fear of unintended negative consequences is the main reason why more people choose not to act in a radical way. We don’t give our riches to the poor because we’re afraid they’ll spend it getting high instead of buying milk for their babies. Meanwhile, the poor stay poor, and the babies have no milk anyway.