It is sad that you had to ask a forum about my question how long ago to reply…
Why did you have to seek an Orthodox priest out? He never even had my original question.
note about the orthodox priest quote–I did not ask a priest about your question, rather I had found this article several months ago… and when I read your question here, it reminded me of what I read in the article, so I thought that what was said in the article might be pertinent to your question. I was not the questioner; this was a random thing I found searching for Catholicism’s view on different religions. Sorry for the misunderstanding.
They can do it all, and many do.
Without the threat of hell causing them to.
They just do it.
My question is, how is one who does good just as the atheist does any better because they were ordered to do it by their God?
The one who wasn’t ordered to do anything did it anyway.
I would look at it this way: one person does something for any reason, a good deed, but not out of love for God (as they do not love God, or do not believe in him). Another person does the exact same good deed, but her motivation is love for God.
If God doesn’t exist, the person who acts out of love for God might be a pitiful and pathetic creature, like a little child who cleans up some milk he claims his imaginary friend spilt (and he truly believes it so). It is cute, but to some extent meaningless (unless he really has an imaginary friend). If he does have such a friend, it appears quite meaningful to him, but to the outside observer, it is not meaningful.
Also, if that little child lets his mother clean up the spilled milk, the child will feel disappointed and hurt when the mother does not do this act for the sake of the imaginary friend. The mother thinks the child is silly, the child thinks the mother is close-minded and heartless.
Thus it is with believers and nonbelievers assessing one another’s good deeds–there is a degree of subjective perception that makes it difficult to take the other seriously.
That is why we see these banters back and forth of people speaking past each other.
Nonetheless, we might ask what is different about the mother cleaning up the milk, vs. the child cleaning it up? If you look at this from a purely external point of view, there is no difference. The act of cleaning up the milk is the same… perhaps the child is a bit more clumsy, but there is no difference between his cleaning up the milk and his mother.
But if you include the
internal motivation, the acts are clearly different. The mother cleans up the milk with the idea that her child his silly, clumsy, and there is no imaginary friend. THe child cleans up the milk with the idea that his imaginary friend is shy, clumsy, and in need of a nice friend who won’t make fun of him. We can see that inwardly the act is different.
So the question becomes: do we speak of actions as purely external (I give a homeless man food, and my friend gives a homeless man food,)–so all we pay attention to is the act of giving the man food…
or, do we include the internal motivation alongside the external act… for are they a corporate whole, or is it justified to separate them? If you scan peoples’ brains as they give homeless people food, and they confess to you why they did it–will you see a different brain scan for someone who gives food because it makes them feel good inside, vs. the brain scan of somone who gives food because they felt empathy with the homeless man? if the brain scans show a difference, it would seem the internal motivation of each person is part of the external, is tied to it closely–so you cannot separate them. And the acts would be different, even if outwardly they appear the same.
So if you have an unbeliever and a believer, who both do the same good deed, but inwardly they have a different motivation–then what they are doing is in fact different. To do something out of love of God would be different from a reason that is NOT love of God.
Now then you must question–is it God’s grace that inspired someone to do something for love of him? and this would make the deed different from someone who does a deed in their natural power, without God’s help. This is a difficult question, but I will say that when you become romantically attracted to someone, you did not choose to be attracted, but rather it imposes itself upon you… in the same way, when we do a good deed, we cannot choose the motivation we have… whether for love of God, or for selfish reasons (or is love of God a selfish reason for those who take pleasure in it?)… we find this motivation bubble up within ourselves, and even if we want to feel differently, we cannot choose so, except through difficult practise, of great intentionality, deliberateness, such as we find in the writings of Buddha. And so perhaps it does take God’s grace to feel the right motivation, because we cannot do so of ourselves.
