I was listening to this latest episode of Dogma Debate by David Smalley in which he told of collecting gifts through a humanist group for a needy person: http://www.spreaker.com/user/smalleyandhyso/159-secrets-of-the-salvation-army. At the 12 minute point, I was suddenly reminded of a similar experience I had about five years ago. I tried to put the event into perspective for several years afterward, but I couldn’t articulate my discomfort with the situation and eventually stopped thinking about it. When I heard this story on Dogma Debate, Smalley made clear to me what had made me upset: Christians had peed all over my goodwill.

Around Christmas 2008, I organized a party at my apartment. I invited a bunch of my friends through Couchsurfing.com, stocked the refrigerator with cheap beer, collected a few bucks from anyone who wanted to contribute, and purchased around $150 of tortillas, ground beef, beans, salsa, lettuce, and sour cream. The guests formed an assembly line and proceeded to make 110 one-pound burritos. As we completed them, the guests had to clear room in the refrigerator by disposing of the initial contents of the refrigerator (the beer).

Most people stayed over, finding sleeping room on the floor and couch. In the morning I reheated the burritos in several ovens around the apartment complex. I was able to wake up one partier to help me load up boxes of burritos before we headed over to meet another Couchsurfing contact, a lady who informed me that she had plenty of stockings and stocking stuffers to contribute. When we arrived at her house, she had the perfect items to round out the gifts: stockings, oranges, toothbrushes, toothpaste, and socks. Awesome. All would be distributed as a small gift to 100 homeless people on the streets of Austin.

With, of course… Bible stories.

I sighed. I had never been in such a situation and I wasn’t sure what to do. In an inarticulate manner, I tried to explain why I really, really wished we could leave those items out. Of course we did not immediately reach an understanding. Her reasons for leaving the tracts in the stockings were many, but I can’t recall exactly how the conversation went. Here are a list of the arguments that she may have brought up, and others which subsequently crossed my mind:

• The tracts were already in the stockings. We just had to add the other stuff like the burritos. Taking them out would be additional work.
• Many of the homeless people didn’t have anything to read, many of them enjoyed reading, and these tracts constituted several pages of materials.
• Most of these people were Christian and liked receiving Christian material. I would concede this point even though she presented no evidence. Most of our nation is Christian, and I assume the homeless population is no different.
• The tracts were harmless. People could read them or not read them, whichever they chose.
• People may read it and be converted to Christianity, giving them a message of hope.
• I got to put the items I chose into the gift, so who was I to tell her what she could and couldn’t include.
• My stubbornness was only threatening to withhold gifts from people. Were my atheist principles more important than sharing a small gift with the less fortunate?

In the end, I sincerely feel that her heart was in a good place. I knew that at the time, so it was difficult to come to grips with my anger. And I was angry. I held my ground, sort of, and I told her that I would remove half of the tracts. It was a decent compromise given that I was not prepared for the situation. When I and the three of my friends who had managed to fight through their hangovers were nearly done distributing the stockings around Austin, I realized that every stocking, tract laden or not, contained a candy cane wrapped in paper conveying the message of God’s love and Christ’s sacrifice on the cross. It really didn’t matter to me at that point because we had met a lot of great homeless people, given them some gifts, and spent hours visiting with the ones who wanted to chat.

So why did I feel angry again a week later? Were my atheistic principles really more important than giving homeless people some fresh socks and a meal? I felt like a jerk based on all of the aforementioned arguments.

What upsets me now is that I ever felt like a jerk about this in the first place. I’m well aware that we weren’t saving the world, and I don’t deserve to feel all that great about doing far less than I should do for others, but at the least I shouldn’t feel ashamed about the few good things I do, right? Six years later, I realize that, while my goodwill and those of my friends wasn’t wasted or ruined, it was peed on just a little bit.

As Smalley said, the Christians “branded” our gift. It was created by a group of people of various beliefs, including Christians, but also including a whole bunch of hippies with non-Christian spiritual beliefs, Eastern religious leanings, deists, pantheists, and at least one atheist. None of us even thought about incorporating symbols of our own beliefs into the gifts (unless you count the few of us who insisted on making several vegetarian burritos). We wanted to have some fun and do something we could feel good about with what little we had to offer.

The Christian brand was stamped on the goodwill of all of us. We got to do something mildly nice, we got to have fun, but the message was not ours. The message was, “If you want something good; if you want to know who cares, look to the Christians who brought you this gift.” We weren’t the ones threatening to hold gifts hostage; the Christian was holding our goodwill hostage to her own proselytizing, well intentioned as she was.

So that’s why I’m pissed off, but what about those homeless people? Well I’m a bit pissed for them, too, I guess. I don’t remember the exact message of the tracts, but similar ones repeat the beatitude from the Sermon on The Mount that tells them they are blessed by their meekness; the stoic message that they’ll inherit the Earth if they only accept their place for a few more years or decades; just a few of the many messages that I think can make someone feel better, but are potentially harmful and are at the least mistaken. I don’t see deception as redemptive, especially when it encourages passiveness toward one’s own position in life. It distracts people from the fact that they’ve been dealt a truly shitty hand, and that the only chance they have at redemption is through their own desires and the aide of real people, whether those people think their working for God or doing good of their own accord. So if I’m feeling any guilt this holiday season, it’s that I do so little for others, not that I did one good thing one time and didn’t try to brand it with anyone’s personal beliefs.

A PARTING THOUGHT:

But back to the message. These behaviors put atheists and humanists in a difficult position. We’ve always been involved in giving and philanthropy and altruism. There are some disagreements about nonbelievers being less giving than Christians. I think it’s debatable. After adjusting for tithing, of which likely only a small percentage goes to philanthropic causes, the figures are closer than normally cited. I would also argue that we humanists are more interested in institutional change than in charity, but even at that we’re gaining ground. Humanist organizations like Foundation Beyond Belief are popping up annually, and secular groups like Doctors without Borders have always been around, getting donations from believers and nonbelievers alike and simply doing good without any regard to religious affiliation.

But in the image arms race, we’re facing an awkward situation where we’re racing believers to the bottom in terms of self congratulation. We’re having to advertise our goodwill more now after decades of being slandered as selfish Randians. It’s unfortunate. I think we would largely prefer to carry on doing good for goodness’ sake. We don’t want to pee all over our giving, but we’re tired of the bad name and, understandably, many people who are far better than I am want credit now, individually and collectively. It’s like the courthouse monuments controversies. We don’t want to put our signs up next to nativity scenes and Ten Commandments monuments, but we’ll continue paying a social price if those religious monuments stand alone without a rebuttal.

At the middle of this, but perhaps benefiting from it, are the needy. It’s possible that they’ll receive more aide as a result, but I would rather not have them be pawns in our popularity contest along the way. I would rather see greater institutional change to benefit the less fortunate, but as the religious have taught us, there’s just not much glory in that.