Do you see yourself as a good person? Does it matter to you?
I think I'm a good person because I want to be a good person and, consequently, try to be. To me, intention has everything in the world to do with it. I mean, I still am a horrible person at the same time. I'm human. My temper flares. I can be lazy. I'm always thinking, in retrospect,
I should've done this, I should've done that. But it just goes back to
trying to be good.
It reminds me of a scene from the movie
Driving Lessons. The main character's father is a priest or a preacher or something, and in the sermon he talks about how people are always asking him if they're real Christians and how he answers them. It's not that I'm saying that being a Christian and doing good are the same thing. It's just a very similar concept.
Ask yourselves this question: How is a person truly free until they can think and act for themselves? God gave us free will so we could choose His love. You see, He wanted us to understand our commitment, to be grown-up about it.
If you say to me, "Am I a Christian?", I say to you, if you strive to do good, then you're a Christian. If you do not seek to hurt or betray others, you're a Christian. If you are true to yourself and treat others as you'd have them treat you, you're a Christian. The more a person parades their Christianity for the benefit of others, the less I am inclined to trust the Christianity they claim to bring.
God tells us, true faith is the freedom to choose truth. How you express that--the way, the manner, the means at your disposal--these things are of no consequence, be you Christian or atheist, unless in your heart you are true.
Do you think good and bad can even be defined objectively enough to categorize behavior as one or the other?
No. Like I mentioned above, I think it has everything in the world to do with intention. For example, if a friend of mine was being insensitive to my feelings and did something to offend me without realizing it, I would try my best not to get angry. I always remind myself that no one tries to be a bad person--well, most people don't. They simply sometimes have lapses in judgement and are momentarily selfish or self-centered. But I do the same thing, so I can't find fault in those actions.
And from where have you obtained your sense of morality? Do you think people are inherently good/inherently bad, or is it shaped by how their families and greater society raises them?
I honestly don't know where I obtained my sense of morality. I'll just go ahead and say it: I did not grow up in a home with the kind of moral standards I hold myself to. I mean, my parents were very vocal about their conservative political beliefs, but my father had a lot of commitment issues and my mother was sort of socialized to be a bit prejudiced against certain things and people. I went to church and Sunday school as a child, but I never really paid attention closely enough or was educated well enough to be able to claim that my sense of morality is religion-based. I don't know if I would say it, however, is entirely inherent, either. Perhaps I learned from books. I did, after all, grow up with the
Harry Potter generation, and it does not seem too outlandish for me to say that J. K. Rowling really made an impression on the person I turned out to be.
I have also heard, however, that people have generally learned the basis of their moral standards by the time they are five-years-old. So... Who knows?
Edit: Oh, and I think people are inherently sort of good and evil. It is instinct both to love (reproduction) and to hate (self-preservation). I think when we are young selfishness comes much more easily; love is a very complex emotion while hatred is fairly simple. You'll notice a child is quick to tell a lie to evade a punishment without ever having the concept explained to him and that laughter flows freely when he observes another falling on his face. However, it is a much more miraculous thing to see a child turn to another and share a toy without saying a word or giving it a second thought.
