Speech Text - The Reverend Richard Gilbert
May 21, 2006

THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING GOOD FOR NOTHING

When President Bush recently visited the Canandaigua Academy, my high school, to tout the new Medicare drug benefit program, my 94-year-old mother was in the audience.  The “warm up act” to entertain the guests while waiting for the president was a group of students presenting songs from Meredith Wilson’s Music Man. And what did these future leaders sing as the president arrived?  “We got trouble, we got trouble, right here in River City.”  The irony was exquisite.

We’ve got trouble right here in River City – or Canton – of wherever you live.  As one rabbi said of the troubled Middle East:  “The next 20 years will be the hardest.  They always have been.”  That will not be news to you who graduate this day.  You probably would prefer some uplifting oration that will send you forth to conquer the world.  But I come from a prophetic religious tradition, and that was not the style of those prophets of the human spirit who spoke truth to power – nor is it mine.  I bring warning against the ascendancy of the bottom line ethic. 

Ours is a society ferociously and frantically committed to a bottom-line ethic.  From super-kindergartens promising to get your child early admission to Harvard, Yale, Stanford or St. Lawrence, to students obsessed with grades to impress graduate schools or potential employers, to a market ethic which worships profit above all else, we are addicted – not so much to oil – but to reward and punishment – tangible rewards and punishments.  From corporate executives not content with seven figure salaries, to politicians whose service to the public is tainted by scandal – the bottom line ethic is alive and well in this nation.

This is an instrumental ethic – every action must be undertaken, every judgment made, on the basis of pay-off for the individual.  Expediency is the test.  Whatever will sell.  Greed is good.  Sincerity is an act.  Honesty is for losers.  Morality is for wimps and saints and fools.

Adapted to the academic context, for example, a degree in music or arts or theology will often bring the parental question, “But what can you do with that?”  Sound familiar?

When you were not immersed in books or mesmerized by the Internet these past four years, perhaps you had time for the comics page – a true reflection of the culture.  There you might have encountered the Gospel According to Ziggy – Ziggy, that pitiful character for whom nothing ever goes right.  In one particular strip Ziggy says, “I always heard if you were real good all your life you’d be rewarded.  So far I’ve been good for nothing.”  And that is my theme - the importance of being good – for nothing.

Let me illustrate with a story that reminds us of the pivotal role of the Universalist church in the founding of St. Lawrence University 150 years ago.  Hosea Ballou was a 19th century preacher of universal salvation, the final harmony of all souls with God – God’s nature is love - all are ultimately forgiven – no one goes to Hell – a controversial doctrine then and now.  One afternoon he was riding the circuit in the New Hampshire hills with a Baptist minister, arguing theology as they traveled. At one point, the Baptist looked over and said, "Brother Ballou, if I were a Universalist and feared not the fires of Hell, I could hit you over the head, steal your horse and saddle, and ride away, and I'd still go to heaven." Hosea Ballou, without hesitation, turned to him and said, "If you were a Universalist, the idea would never occur to you."

This may or may not be an apocryphal story, but it points to an important ethical truth – the importance of being good - for nothing.  I preach an intrinsic ethic – one in which we celebrate unenforceable obligations - that our every action need not be results-oriented, that our every effort in the marketplace need not bring profit.  Ethics are those inner imperatives that prompt us to care when we are not required to do so, to act when it may be controversial, to serve when we would rather indulge ourselves.

There is a central place in our being for doing the right thing – not to seek reward or avoid punishment – but simply because it is the right thing to do.  It’s called integrity.  As novelist Walker Percy puts it, “a person can get all A’s and flunk ordinary living.”

I will never forget one of my high school classmates, a champion swimmer, a Harvard graduate, now a poverty lawyer.  At one meet he had apparently won the free-style race – his specialty – when he walked over to the judges and disqualified himself, admitting he had not touched the end of the pool properly.  No one had noticed – except my friend.  He could have won the race with its rewards, but his fundamental sense of integrity would not allow it.  He had illustrated the importance of being good – for nothing.  I have never forgotten that act.

While the conventional wisdom in our culture is striving for rewards and results – a bottom-line ethic – there is a countervailing perspective that looks more to inner values than external constraints to guide behavior. Character is what we are when no one is looking.  Character is acting justly though it may well not do us any particular good – and even may harm us.  You know the old conundrum – if a tree falls in the forest and there is no one around, is there sound?  The moral equivalent of that is: what if you did a good deed and no one noticed?  Is it still a good deed?

Why do we keep promises even when we could get away with breaking them?  Why do we not cheat on an exam even though the instructor is out of the room?  Why do we drive 55 miles an hour on Route 11 even when there is little danger of being caught?  Why do justice-makers seek to end poverty in the midst of plenty only to see the chasm between rich and poor widen daily?  Why do we involve ourselves in community service when no one seems to notice and we often fail?  Why do the peacemakers try to end war in the Middle East and find themselves rebuffed as unpatriotic?  And why have people done these things for centuries?

Two years ago my friend Father Daniel Berrigan came to the Cornell University campus for a weekend celebrating peace and justice-making.  I worked with Dan three decades ago when he was on the staff of Cornell United Religious Work and I was minister at the Ithaca Unitarian Church.  Dan was asked,  “Don’t you despair at the moral state of the world?”  Dan’s answer was typically soft, brief and profound:  “Despair is a luxury beyond my means.”  Dan suggested that the means inheres in the ends, there is meaning in the very struggle for peace and justice.  There is spiritual significance in the very struggle to grow a soul and help repair the world. 

Yes, we’ve got trouble – right here in River City.  We’ve got trouble when we define our lives by rewards and punishments – when we forget that there are times “no good deed goes unpunished” and our actions are neither popular nor profitable.  Our task is to take our bearings from an inner moral compass, not a weathervane which blows with the wind.

And so, when the bottom line ethic tempts you, as it will time and time again – perhaps you will give my words some thought – and remember the importance of being good – for nothing.