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I love people who do good matter-of-factly, not calling special attention to themselves and not needing to be constantly propped up with praise. They are the only do-gooders who do much good. One of my neighbors is such a person. Every garbage pickup day he hangs a sack of treats on his mailbox for the garbage men. He didn’t do anything at all to call attention to his holy actions. He just does good matter-of-factly. I have stood on the street chatting with him for a few minutes when he was walking his little dog and at the end of the talk felt like my soul had been washed real good. Not that he even mentioned God. Just his way of being uplifts everyone who has the good fortune to be in his presence. No matter what he says or does there is some kind of holy touch in it. Love oozes out the ends of his fingers and leads him to pack a little sack of goodies for some of the most neglected people in our society. Some people do good because they think it will keep them from going to hell. I have never believed you can scare people into the kingdom. I don’t want these fear-crazed people trying to help me. I’m afraid they’ll smear their fear all over me. My brother once said, “Wasn’t it nice of man to create God in his own image?” Man has all these morbid fear images from listening to too many sadistic evangelists and watching too many Stephen King movies. He projects his own images onto God. Once a former evangelist who alternated between terrorizing the world and cutting hair was giving me a haircut and laughing over scaring people out of their wits. The “hell” that would be fitting for him would be to have a thousand years of instruction on John’s words, “God is Love” and Paul’s words that anything not of love is merely “a tinkling bell and a clanging cymbal.” That’s the reason we are all half goofy. There are too many bells tinkling and cymbals clanging in our ears all day long. There’s too little love. If he would pack a few goodies for his garbage men for a decade I could stand to hear him preach. One of my favorite stories is about a cobbler in England who had these words put on his headstone: “Here lies John Smyth who cobbled shoes in this town 40 years to the glory of God.” He was just doing good matter-of-factly. He saw no difference in praying and cobbling if you were cobbling for the glory of God. A semi-illiterate Baptist exhorter who never completed enough training to be ordained took an interest in me when I was 16. He ran a large cow-milking operation for Sterchi’s Dairy by day. He milked cows to the glory of God while he helped a 16-year-old boy find himself by night. He would let me have his Olds 88 once for every time I went to church with him and sang with his wife. Nights I didn’t “cash in” on the agreement and go see my girlfriend, I would read the Bible to him. One night he said, “Last time I looked you’ve got 22 nights with the car coming to you.” I said, “Brother Hubert, if it’s all the same to you, I’d rather stay here and read the Bible to you.” He wasn’t trying to save me. He never preached to me one time. He just became such a dear friend to me that I could not drink beer in his car. To see him walking the floor rejoicing and wiping his eyes with his little wadded up handkerchief while I read to him became one of the most important and fulfilling joys of my life. He got to doing good so matter-of-factly that he was not even aware he might be saving my life.
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