Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

“So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.

• Matthew 6:2-4

“The English moral philosopher Henry Sidgwick was a fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. In his key work Methods of Ethics (1874), he explored the problems of free will by examining intuitive principles of conduct. The pursuit of pleasure, he claimed, does not exclude altruism, or the providing of pleasure for others, since providing pleasure for others is itself a pleasure. A liberal philanthropist and a champion of women’s rights to education, Sidgwick was instrumental in setting up Newnham, Cambridge’s first college for female students.”

• Sam Atkinson (senior editor), The Philosophy Book, Big Ideas Simply Explained

Henry Sidgwick (1838-1900) was a British utilitarian philosopher and economist.  His primary focus in utilitarianism was the pursuit of pleasure.  He put his thoughts about providing pleasure to others into practice, since pleasing others also pleased himself.  He was a noted philanthropist.

This philosophy of Sidgwick is probably not the first time someone noticed that the endorphins started to flow when you did good deeds.  After all, if Jesus talked about hypocrites doing good deeds in his time for personal glory, the hypocrites might not know what endorphins are, but they liked the way they felt, and they liked the social brownie points.

So, we can assume that do-gooders for the sake of social gain and a feel good probably has been around since Noah, if not before.  But the point on social status gain requires a social society in a community, not as likely within a family.

As for my wife’s family, only one sister was a volunteer scouter like my wife and I, but she was the scoutmaster until her younger two sons got their Eagle Scout and then she turned it over to others.  My wife and I stayed working for roughly ten years.  We enjoyed the team we had built at the district level, and we became the song leaders at the council level.

But I mention her family in that a few of the other brothers and sisters thought we needed to have our heads examined.  We were probably the poorest paid family of any of them and we spent a lot of money on our volunteer work.

But we loved the boys.  We loved what we did.  And we prayed that we were making a difference in people’s lives.  We could openly express our love for Jesus at Scouting meetings since part of the oath was “duty to God and country.”

One bit of carryover from Scouting to church volunteer work came when we cleared the adjacent property for additional parking at our church, The church was growing.  Some trees had to be cut, and the head of property was a contractor.  We used his tools.  He was trying to cut down a couple of trees with a dull axe.  I went to our van and pulled out the axe that I had used on consecutive weekends, once teaching boys how to sharpen an axe, and the next week teaching adult scout leaders how to sharpen an axe.  The axe was “shave your face” sharp.  In good scouting fashion, I made sure that I had a safe swinging radius.  I first went to clear limbs so that I had a clear swing at the tree trunk.  I was clipping two-inch diameter limbs, two with each swing.  The limbs seemed to simply pop off the tree, a softwood tree.  Sadly, the trunk, about four inches in diameter, took two swings before it came down, but those were swung by the contractor.  Due to the constant barrage of television ads at that time, my axe was nicknamed by the church workers as the Great Ginsu.  Note: You can still purchase Ginsu knives, just not advertised on TV.  But then again, I made the professional contractor look bad.  But how often does a contractor use an axe?

But there is a difference between a Christian helping others and the hypocrite.  As Jesus says above in the quote, the hypocrite has already been rewarded in full, but the Christian does as much as he or she can in private, away from the fanfare, because our reward is in Heaven.  We work because God loves the needy, and God is in our heart, thus, we have a burning desire to help.

Sidgwick and his kind can do good deeds to get an endorphin high, but the next day, that high is gone.  He did it all for the pleasure, but earthly pleasures of any kind are not lasting pleasures.

I would rather just get the work done and move on to the next task.

If you like these Tuesday morning essays about philosophy and other “heavy topics,” but you think you missed a few, you can use this LINK. I have set up a page off the home page for links to these Tuesday morning posts. I will continue to modify the page as I add more.

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.