Unexplainable instincts
Jill
Carattini
On an international
flight, after waiting five long hours for takeoff, a voice announced that the
flight was cancelled. It is a scene many have been privy to, so I know better
than to solicit sympathy. But in the aftermath of this announcement was a scene
that captured my attention. A young girl, no older than 10, immediately cupped
her face with her hands, visibly deflated by this news. In broken English, a
woman nearby tried to comfort her and the story slowly unraveled. Apparently,
the child had written an essay that had won an award, which promised a week at
space camp in the United States. She was only halfway to her destination waiting
anxiously for the second half when the flight was cancelled for the night and
rescheduled for the morning. Since she was traveling alone, news of the
cancelled flight meant an evening far from home, alone in a foreign city, and
one less day of her much-anticipated camp.
As the story was
slowly drawn out, listeners around the cabin responded instinctively. A man
immediately provided a cell phone for her to call home, a young mother offered
to help her get to the hotel, and a flight attendant sat down beside her and
offered to stay with her for the night and bring them both back in the morning
for the next day's flight.
Perhaps you have been
active in a similar scene--bringing help for the stranded motorist in the rain,
responding with care for the family on the news whose house burned down, guiding
a lost child in the grocery store. What is it that pulls us toward goodness in
such a scene? What is it that moves us with the desire to help, particularly if
we are merely creatures operating with instincts to survive? When perfect
strangers reach out as if instinctively shouldn't we pause to ask about the
instinct? When we sense our need to move toward something or someone in care and
concern, could it not follow that we have been made to know this need?
A national radio
program recently ran a segment discussing one company's efforts with what they
are calling "ethics rehabilitation" classes--classes meant to re-instill the
ethics essential for effective business. I was fascinated by this call to
morality even across a medium that daily chips away the idea of a moral law and
Lawgiver.
What is it within us
that instinctively recognizes our need for morality? What is it that sees a need
to distinguish right and wrong, good and evil? Why do we have this longing for
the good? Can it be truly explained if we are merely products of time plus
matter plus chance?
In a letter to the
Romans, the apostle Paul hints at a deeper reality at work moving us toward what
we long to find but often do not, what we long to see corrected in ourselves, in
our communities, in our broken world. "Who hopes for what they already see?" he
asks (Romans 8:24). Perhaps this inward groaning for good, our need for a moral
law--it is the hope for what we were made to see. It is the instinct that
recognizes the sin that stains our fallen world and longs for what God intended.
We help the stranded child far away from her parents because the desire to see
children cared for is set within us, because we hope for what is good and we
hope to see goodness fully.
Paul reminds us that
our recognition of the good points us to the God who first saw things and called
them good. We were made to know a moral law because we were made by the moral
Lawgiver. We were created to taste and see that the Lord is good. He who has
given you and me the hope and longing to know and see good is goodness Himself.
Knowing Him, we know not only the why and who behind the instinct,
but the one who makes it whole.