In Transit-Are People Good?

From daily making use of public transit in Boston, the MBTA, I have come to the conclusion that people want to be good, maybe they just don't know how. Yes, our natural inclination is sin and selfishness and disobedience (the Bible, and my unchecked actions, are very clear on that), but from watching people I think that our natural inclination is also to fix that, to try to be good.

Early last week I rode the 47 bus, as I typically do, to class. Each time I have taken that bus or another or even the T, I have noticed a sort of subculture forming within the bus. A subculture of comradory that transcends racial lines, socioeconomic status, and even age and gender identities. A subculture developing merely because of our shared environment and experience: riding the bus somewhere between Ruggles Station and the Boston Medical Center. When an elderly individual walks in, immediately people stand to allow him or her to sit, or someone with a cane (even if they look slightly crazy). People help one another, shouting if the door closes before some poor softspoken girl can get off as she rushes to the front through the packed out T. People want to be good people. Thank God. Thank God that He put that desire within us, if He had't can you imagine what this world would look like given what it looks like now?

However, people wanting to be good just isn't good enough. We are still selfish and innately unrighteous. More times than not our selfishness outweighs our desire to be good, especially when no one is looking on. It is easy, excuse me-easier, to do the right thing in a bus full of people with others looking on as an elderly individual boards. The motivation to stand and offer your seat may not come from a desire or wanting to be good but more so a desire to look good, not be a good person but appear as a good person. The latter showing in fact the absence of true goodness within, true goodness lies in the motivation for good actions. The actual act of getting up though does show a desire to want goodness, even if that desire comes out of selfish motivations. The problem then is that we can't be good no matter how hard we try because the truth is, our selfishness gets in the way. After a long hard day one may be less inclined to get up from their seat with a justified thinking that "someone else will rise to the occasion, my circumstances warrant me a deserving right to sit down." We can't make ourselves selfless, we can't make ourselves perfect, without wrong, we can't make ourselves good all the time no matter how much we may want to, or want to appear that we are. We are selfish.

It gives me hope that people do try though, try to be good. By trying, that insinuates a desire to change, a desire to find a solution. That solution is Jesus Christ who makes us perfect and holy and sinless through His redemptive obedience on the cross and the subsequent indwelling of the Holy Spirit in each believer. Thank God that I can be good, not on my own accord, but with dependence on and action of the Holy Spirit within me. I can be good even when I am alone, even when I am not on a packed out bus with eyes watching on. The hard part though, is choosing that goodness. Choosing the Holy Spirit over my selfishness. That choice is hard and usually uncomfortable, but not impossible (thank God). Selfishness is comfortable and easy. So then, it is a daily choice to be good, a daily choice to utilize the Holy Spirit, a daily choice to depend. Thank you God for the choice, for the desire and for the possibility to be good as I desire to be. The more I choose God's goodness the more I want to choose God's goodness because I realize that choice allows me and enables me to live to the full potential and opportunity that God has called me to, through His abundant grace.


2 Cor 5:17 "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come."

John 15:5, 8 "I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing...By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples."

1 Peter 1:14-16, 22-23 "As obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance, but as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, since it is written, "You shall be holy, for I am holy."...Having purified your souls by your obedience to the truth from a sincere brotherly love, love one another earnestly from a pure heart, since you have been born again, not of perishable seed but of imperishable, through the living and abiding word of God."

John 7: 38 "Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, 'Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.'"

We are enabled to live a holy, righteous, being-good life by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit through Christ's sacrificial act of the cross. Not because of us, but because of Him. (Eph 2:8-10)