Messenger Mailbag - Am I A Good Person?

An anonymous reader asks, “How does somebody know whether they’re a good person? Asking for a friend.” 

Why, dear reader, would you expect a lowly mailroom guy to answer such a lofty question? A question that rattles around in one’s mind, like an empty 5-Hour Energy can in the bed of a Chevy Silverado. But seeing as the end of the year is Naughty or Nice time, I say, “What the heck, let’s give it a try!”  We can work together. I’ll research the right questions, and then you can answer them from the comfort of your own home.

Let’s start with some time-tested resources.

Time-tested resources

Of course, I immediately think of Cosmopolitan magazine. A May 1987 issue features an article, “Does Loving a Really Bad Boy Make Me a Really Bad Girl?” (You might recall the cover photo of a punked-out Sally Field clinging to Warren Beatty on a Harley.) Here are the three most pertinent questions listed in the article:

1.    Did the last time you did anything of redeeming value involve S&H Green Stamps?

2.    At least once a week, does somebody come up to you and yell something like, “Look at me, look at me in the eyes! Where is my snowblower?”

3.    Have you ever knowingly parked in a space labeled “Reserved for Our Wonderful Employee-of-the-Month Pregnant Veteran Delivery Driver Recovering from Torn ACL Surgery?” 

If you answer “yes” to all three questions, you are not a good person. But either way, congratulations! We’re making progress.

Encouraged by this Cosmo foray, we can move on to a perennial favorite, Highlights magazine. The Goofus and Gallant cartoon page in a November 2003 edition tells us: 

“After a rainstorm, Gallant stoops to tenderly rescue every last worm that wriggles out onto the sidewalk. Goofus gleefully stomps on the worms, splattering the ankles of passersby.” 

If you, too, diligently save every worm, you are a good person. But if you are an enthusiastic worm stomper (especially if you then use your car to get the ones in the street), you are a bad person.

Unfortunately, these two magazine tests might prove inconclusive. If so, we should move on to the next tool: peer evaluation.

Peer evaluation

The National Academy of Good or Not So Good suggests assembling a diverse panel of five people who know you well. Could be as follows: A close relative. A childhood friend. A workplace colleague. Your primary care physician’s assistant. Your recycling garbage truck driver (“Wow. Sure sounds like a lot of glass bottles this week.”).

Give the panel, with you not in the room, a series of hypothetical scenarios, each with escalating tension levels. The panel will vote for the level at which you would absolutely lose your mind, screaming things you will regret later. Here’s an example for a two-partner household:

Scenario 2PH-4: Your partner with a snarky sense of humor knows you love to watch hundreds of Hallmark Christmas movies every year.  

a.    Five minutes into every movie, your partner enters the room and says, “Let me guess. The very hectic city girl with a nice but boring boyfriend has to briefly return to her small hometown.”

b.    Ten minutes later, they return to say, “Let me guess. She meets the eventual love of her life, who owns a small business in her small hometown. Then there is a conflict that makes it hard for their relationship to blossom.”

c.     Thirty minutes later, they return to say, “Let me guess. After bonding over some sort of local Christmas ritual, they will finally kiss while friends and neighbors clap and cheer, and gentle snowflakes start to fall.” 

If the panel says you’d absolutely lose your mind at level (a) on day one, you are a bad person. If you’d hold it together at least until level (c) on day five, you are a good person.

For scenarios applicable to people who live by themself, live with parents, live with kids, live in assisted living centers, or live life on the lam, please visit the National Academy of Good or Not So Good’s website. Be forewarned: their website is not so good.

By the way, if you lack skill at screaming regrettable things, please refer to an article in the March 2016 edition of Harper’s Magazine entitled, “‘My Mother Was Right’ and Other Phrases Sure to Win Pointless Spousal Arguments.”

Still no resolution on your “good person” question? When all else fails, we can see what Methodism has to say.

Asking Methodism

After some dabbling in Methodist theology, I find that “Am I a good person?” is a surprisingly complicated question.

Intuitively, we’d assume being a good person is good, ipso facto (Latin for “duh”). We would rather have good people than bad people.

On the other hand, worrying about being a good person implies a primary focus on one’s self, one’s ego, in comparison to other people’s level of goodness. If I’m better than 51% of the population, I must be good. And if only the bottom 20% are “bad,” we might argue that the entire “non-bad” 80% qualify as “good.”

Methodism says this approach is barking up the wrong ladder (my words, not John Wesley’s). God gives us prevenient grace. We are all loved from day one, with a free will opportunity to develop an increasingly deep relationship with God, merging into God’s love and sharing that love with all. God is on the playing field (yes! finally a sports analogy!) covered in mud. Are we sitting in the locker room, feeling good about ourselves because our uniform is so clean?

Ultimately, the key question is not “Am I a good person?” Rather, it’s “Do God and I make a good team, one that gets stronger every day?”

So, in hindsight, was all that earlier good person research, with the snowblower and the worms and the very hectic city girl, a colossal waste of time? I’m asking for a friend.

Bruce Hale