Where To Find Goodness and Kindness
Kevin Berthia, now 32, lived in the San Francisco Bay area 10 years ago. He had an infant daughter who was born premature and the medical costs for her care climbed to nearly $250,000. He couldn’t see a way out of debt, or a reason to keep living.
He fell into a deep depression and headed to the Golden Gate Bridge to end it all.
“I was overwhelmed with everything,” he said on a recent National Public Radio (NPR) radio broadcast. “It’s like everything that I ever was bothered by, everything that I was ever dealing with came up on one day. And I just felt like a failure. All I gotta do is lean back and everything is done. I’m free of all this pain.” But California Highway Patrol Officer Kevin Briggs was there that day, too, and his patience and compassion saved the day. Now retired, he and Berthia recently hooked up to talk about that painful time, and NPR’s Story Corps was there.
“I was just mad at myself for being in that situation and I was embarrassed,” Berthia told Briggs. “But somehow the compassion in your voice is what allowed me to kinda let my guard down enough for us to have a conversation. We talked for 92 minutes about everything that I was dealing with. My daughter, her first birthday was the next month. And you made me see that if nothing else, I need to live for her.”
“…You know, I don’t trust a lot of people,” added Berthia. “So for you to never judge me and just to have that trust, that’s what keeps us afloat and different from any other friendship.”
Undoubtedly, Briggs would see nothing extraordinary in what he did that day. After all, he was a police officer, sworn to protect and serve. But he could easily have called the paramedics and been done with it. Instead, he recognized that another human being was suffering and desperately needed his help, and that was something more fundamental than his oath as a police officer.
The broadcast didn’t say whether Briggs or Berthia were “believers,” but the human qualities we see in people in everyday life are the same whether in believers or non-believers and confirms the fact that all of us, Christians, Jews, Muslims or people of no faith, are equally children of God, blessed with God-like attributes. God is not exclusive, and neither should we be.
To be clear, despite long-time doubts, I’m a believer – in God and in the expression of my particular faith, which is Catholicism. But all of us “religious” people have to recognize that we have no monopoly on goodness and kindness, and that being a member of a church does not mean God loves us more than those without religion or who profess no faith in God.
In my view, having companions in the search for God, such as other believers, is invaluable for your spiritual life. In my case, the Catholic Eucharist – or Mass – is particularly valuable. But you have to acknowledge that for some for whom it is merely a heritage, religion can get in the way of genuine faith. And allowing those basic human qualities to shine through helps determine whether we’re on the road to God.
Eugene Cullen Kennedy, professor emeritus of psychology at Chicago’s Loyola University, former priest and Catholic dissident, wrote in the National Catholic Reporter about the reactions of victims and survivors of the tragedy of 9/11.
“9/11 revealed that those about to die do not seem afraid or plead for forgiveness for their sins, if they think about them at all,” he writes. “They all have one thing in mind – those they love – and they all do the same thing: They call them up – spouses, family or friends – to tell them they love them.
“This is so obviously the first thing in their lives that they do not think at all about the last things – death, judgment, heaven or hell – ballyhooed by generations of preachers as subjects we will be quizzed on in the SATs we must pass before the Last Judgment.
“9/11 allowed us to witness the ordinary face of goodness in the love that those about to die brought with them to work that day.”
Of course, neither Kennedy nor any of us know what was on the minds of those about to die that day, but Kennedy makes a good point and it is shared by Pope Francis. The pope speaks of religion not as a matter of dogma but as a “love story.” He had this to say in a homily in 2013 about a portion of the Gospel of Mark in which Jesus’ disciples were trying to exclude people from Jesus’ circle.
The disciples, Pope Francis explains, “were a little intolerant,” closed off by the idea of possessing the truth, convinced that “those who do not have the truth, cannot do good,” adding that the root of this possibility of doing good – that we all have – is in creation.
“The Lord created us in His image and likeness, and … all of us have this commandment at heart: do good and do not do evil. All of us.”
“‘But, Father,’ you might say, ‘this is not Catholic! He cannot do good.’ Yes, he can… “The Lord has redeemed all of us, all of us, with the Blood of Christ: all of us, not just Catholics. Everyone! ‘Father, the atheists?’ Even the atheists. Everyone!”… We must meet one another doing good. ‘But I don’t believe, Father, I am an atheist!’ But do good: we will meet one another there.”
Exclusivity is highly valued in our society. Many people, especially celebrities and the rich, want what no one else can have, want to be with people with whom only they can associate and disparage those they believe are beneath them. That can’t be part of Christianity, nor the attitude of anyone searching for God.
