Yesterday I was faced with a choice that was not so clear. I got a call asking if I could babysit tonight (Sunday). When I don't have anything else going, I don't even hesitate; of course I'll watch your kids, I love kids, and earning money sounds better than sitting around on my rear. However, I've been helping out my friends with my church's high school youth group summer activities, and tonight was the last night. I'm also helping this same youth group throughout the school year. So, do I follow through on my commitment to help the youth group, or do I skip it for a desperate-sounding mother? I had selfish motivations for each: this would be my friends' last youth group, or I could earn money. After a bit of consideration, I decided that this mom needed me more than the youth group. There would be other Sundays, and there were plenty of leaders for the night. I should note now that I had never met the mother or the kids I would be sitting, but she was referred to me through a friend of hers that knows me quite well, and that I used as a reference to get my current job. Actually, at the time I agreed to it, I didn't know how many kids or how hold they were either, but the mom was truly desperate-sounding.
So this afternoon I'm getting ready to go babysit and wishing so hard that I could have gone to the youth group event instead. But I thought I was doing the right thing. It turns out that the babysitting was pretty awful. I don't want to go into a lot of details just because I don't feel comfortable doing that. The kids themselves were fine, relatively well-behaved, but the situation was not good. It was a long 7 hours of trying to keep kids occupied. In the end, and actually every time I looked at my watch, I wished that I had made the other choice. Isn't doing the right thing supposed to make me feel better inside? I did get to hang out with all my friends after sitting this evening, but I didn't end the night saying, "I'm really glad I did the right thing."
Are we supposed to feel good after we do good deeds, or "the right thing"? There was an episode in the TV show Friends where Phoebe against argues against Joey that it is possible to do a good deed without any selfish ambitions or benefits for yourself. Phoebe tries again and again to do a good deed that doesn't make her feel good. Eventually she donates money to a PBS telethon on which Joey is working. Her argument is that she hates PBS, so donating money to the channel reflects no selfish ambitions and makes her feel awful. Then it is announced that the PBS telethon has surpassed the amount pledged the year before. They announce the bid that has pushed them over the edge: the pledge Joey had just received from Phoebe. This gets Joey on TV, which is what his goal was, which in turn makes Phoebe feel good. As soon as she realizes this, she's disappointed, realizing that her best effort to do a good deed without feeling good about it had been foiled.
So its just a funny storyline from a TV show--and one that isn't terribly moral at times--but it illustrates my point about my current dilemma in a roundabout-sort-of-way. Why do we do the right thing? Is it because that's what God wants from us or because it'll make us feel good that we did a good thing? I guess our acts of service are meant to be an outpouring of our gratitude because of the grace we've been freely given. But that wasn't necessarily a conscious train of thought in my head. I didn't think to myself, "God has saved me even though I don't deserve it, so to thank him I'm going to help this family out."
Maybe it doesn't matter why do the right thing, as long as it's the right thing. Or is "the right thing" defined by our motivations? I don't know, and I feel like the more I think about it, the more I don't know. The bottom line is that tonight I made a choice, and I was able to help a family in need, and I still got to see my friends. I guess that makes it the right choice after all.
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