This I Believe - Maggie

Freshman year in philosophy we read Euthyphro by Plato. In it, Socrates asks Euthyphro to define Pious. They pose the circular debate: Is Pious pious because God says it is pious, or does God say it is Pious because it Pious. We brought it around to Goodness. Is Good good because God says it is, or does God say so because it is, in itself, good. As a freshman I wasn’t ready to answer, but now I believe the question is flawed. 

I believe in innate Goodness, that God is Good means God and Good are one and the same so that finding the Good in people is the same as seeing God in them. It means that Socrates’ question to Euthyphro is flawed because Plato separates Good from God and therefore cannot define either. 

More importantly, it forces me to see Good in the people around me. I believe in innate Goodness because I am alive despite the innumerable times I’ve put my life into the hands of strangers. I believe in innate Goodness because of the people who accepted me into their families simply on hearing I needed help. 

I believe in innate Goodness because after 2 and a half hours of tears my student will still come back and ask for help; because a parent will threaten her child, “Do you want to turn out like me?” Because a woman stoned out of her mind will move off the steps to let me pass. Because I hate what she is doing to herself, but I still love her.

Maggie is serving as a current Mission Corps volunteer as an ESOL teacher at Visitation BVM School in Kensington.  She is an alumna of St. Joseph's University and spent a year teaching in Turkey before joining the Mission Corps.