Innocence

The other day while sitting in a PX at Fort Jackson, South Carolina, a thought began to take shape. It was something my subconscious has been mulling over for a bout a decade and then over a single weekend emerged into my consciousness.

The problem my subconscious had been wrangling with was how can you feel good about an action even though you know there is a dark irony or consequence which will taint the action. Do you have a duty to call someone to account for the action?

Let me give a few examples. In my faith we are fairly strict on the notion of keeping the Sabbath Day Holy, there are things you just are not supposed to do on the Sabbath like shoping or going to a sporting event, etc. I was serving in a bishopric at the time of this particular event with a bishop who spent his vocational time as a public prosecutor. He was probably the most laid back bishop that I had ever known or had the opportunity to serve with. So one Sunday after Church we were sitting in a bishopric meeting when one of the women in the Church who took it as her duty to hold the other members of our congregation accountable came storming in to indicate that we needed to make some kind of statement on the following Sabbath that people should not be selling things at Church on Sunday. She was of course correct. I looked at the Bishop and he looked at me, and we both knew she was referring to one of our mentally handicapped children who had been selling chocolate bars in the foyer as a class fund raiser that Sunday. The Bishop said, "Well the one I bought was pretty good."

Let me give another example. Another Bishop and his wife decided that the local congregation should work on a blood drive with the American Red Cross and in general the concept was favored by the congregation, although a couple members had expressed some reservations about doing anything with the American Red Cross because of their poor reputation. There was some quiet recognition of the fact and most of the local congregation helped out. Then the Red Cross came back and wanted the Church itself to sponsor a blood collection opportunity for them and the Bishop gave his blessing and the event occurred and the goals were exceeded -- on about the same date that the news services were carrying an article on the FDA hitting the Red Cross with the largest single fine ever assessed against a non-profit organization. The fine was for faulty screening and testing of blood, etc. The Red Cross responded that the fine would not be paid out of donations -- but operating revenues. So in essence our congregation was donating blood to an organization which was going to sell it and use part of the price it charged to pay a fine for sloppy handling of blood.

Now a person could look at either situation and see something wrong with both and wonder how a person could feel good about doing something that was probably questionable. I think that it is a gift from God a blessing of innocence which allows us to look at the intent of the act and intuitively feel good about it regardless of the implications and consequences. When the Bishop bought the candy bar on Sunday at Church what he saw was the excitement in the eyes of a young woman whose eyes were normally kind of glazed over dull. When the congregant gave blood he or she was intending to literally give of his or herself to help someone. And, even if both knew that there were problems involved -- still both were entitled to feel good about what they did. That to me is a blessing which allows us to overlook some of the missteps our religious leaders may make or our churches may take and still feel blessed.

So why did this thought start emerging while I was sitting outside a PX at Fort Jackson. Well, it was pretty much my first encounter with the military and I had previously been pondering the fact that the soldiers on the base were predominantly made up of minority races, in particular, African Americans. The main boulevard into the base was named after the former Senator Strom Thurmond who in his day was an ardent segregationist and most of the by-ways on the base were named after Confederate Generals. That is an irony that I would normally suck up and run with. But, this day I was overwhelmed by the politeness of the soldiers I encountered and the joy they were having with their families who were there in force to celebrate their graduation from basic training -- I just couldn't let the political irony wash out what I was seeing. Although my son later informed me that the racial and regional harmony that I perceived was actually something of an illusion, even that information couldn't take away from what I felt. I think it was a blessing of innocence.