People are truly good at heart? Sadly, no

ELEVEN YEARS AGO, al-Qaeda terrorist Richard Reid tried to blow up American Airlines Flight 63 with a bomb hidden in his shoes. As a result, air travelers to this day must remove their shoes to pass through security at US airports.

In 2006, terrorists plotted to destroy as many as 10 planes flying from London to North America using peroxide-based liquid explosives smuggled in their carry-on luggage. So passengers now must limit any liquids they carry through security checkpoints to minuscule containers sealed in clear plastic bags.

It is fundamental to the Judeo-Christian outlook that human beings are not naturally good. "The intention of man's heart," God says in Genesis, "is evil from his youth."

"It's a wonder I haven't abandoned all my ideals, they seem so absurd and impractical," 15-year-old Anne Frank confided to her diary on July 15, 1944. "Yet I cling to them because I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart. I simply can't build my hopes on a foundation of confusion, misery, and death."

Three weeks after those heartbreaking words were written, the Gestapo discovered the secret annex where Anne and seven others had been hiding. She died in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp the following March.

That is a very important point, in that people tend to want absolutes, dichotomies, in their view of things. In some cases, like moral absolutes, they exist; but in others, they are more dynamic, with tendencies in one direction or another that can change over time.

This is why strength and weakness are good measures of men.

For example, Napoleon observed that “Fatigue makes cowards of us all”. And that is quite correct, except fatigue under the same stresses, is not evenly divided.

In the strong, fatigue can be addressed as something to be overcome, within limits. But in the weak, fatigue can be reinforced, made stronger, by “indulging” in it, using up one’s energy in fretting about how tired you are.

A strong person might “tough it out” through intense pain; but a weak person can be laid low by a paper cut.

Strength and weakness are also relative to age, gender, knowledge, and many other motivations. A person accumulates things that make them strong and weak over the course of their life, and they parcel out their strengths and weaknesses. A person surrounded by strong people may offer only weakness, but when the strength of the strong fails them, the person exhibiting weakness can step into the gap and ‘save the day’, since their strength is reserved.

Some people indulge so much that all that is left in them is weakness. But a real argument can be made, for example, to question “does drink make us weak, or do we drink because we are weak?” It is likelier that weak people can be more easily addicted, and find it harder to break their addictions.

Strength can also be problematic, as it can lead to arrogance, or cause dependency in others. While a strong person might be able to do a task ‘best’, they might step aside and let others try their might, to discover if they can succeed or fail.

We are complex creatures, and it may be best to “know strength and weakness when I see it”, not being too quick to judge them in others. Those who are truly strong or weak will make themselves known.

Very interesting questions because neither he nor my own children when they were little were consistent.

What is consistent in your stories is that the children were doing what they wanted to do without concern for what you (or the other child) wanted. They were selfish, which is not a "good" trait. So you had to teach them to consider others.

If you reflect on the sharing experiences, you'll probably find that the child wanted attention when you weren't providing an adequate amount.

I don't mean to pick on your grandchildren by any means. It is normal for children to think only of themselves, and it is normal for families to need to teach them how to behave in a civilized society.

Sometimes it is so natural we don't see it, but it is still required.

As Jeff pointed out, God Himself has accused us of having every thought being only evil, continually.

He's (God is) hard to argue with.

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