Human nature shines the brightest at holiday time

We're coming up again on the annual season of giving. The winter holidays - Thanksgiving, Christmas, Hanukkah - always seem to bring out our best.

Charities already are filling our mailboxes with appeals to our good natures. The Roanoke Times' Good Neighbors Fund drive will soon begin.

The usual displays of good will toward men (and women) will be an inspiration for many of us to go beyond what we have to do for those in need to do all we can do.

Some argue that we don't need religious inspirations for the annual explosion of benevolence. And it's certainly true that many folks without any religious convictions are generous helpmates for their fellow human beings who have less.

They might argue that it really is human nature to help others. And perhaps it is.

But we also must acknowledge that human nature is a tricky thing.

"It's only human nature for a man to take a drink now and then," said Humphrey Bogart as Charlie Allnut in "The African Queen." He was trying to explain a bout of nasty drunkenness to Methodist spinster Rose Sayer, played by Katherine Hepburn.

"Nature, Mr. Allnut, is what we are put in this world to rise above," she replied.

Rose may have put that a bit too strongly. After all, most religions today encourage good stewardship of nature and the enjoyment of the natural world.

But we are constantly reminded that human nature has its ugly side, too; that there is evidence for the Christian doctrine of original sin.

Last week, that reminder for me came not in the election campaign (though heaven knows there was plenty of the ugly side of human nature there, too), but in a little story about 9/11.

The Department of Homeland Security completed an audit of some of the work it did after the terrorist attacks of 2001.

Many of us probably didn't even remember that in the spring of 2002 the government agreed to replace air conditioners and air purifiers damaged by dust and debris from the collapse of the World Trade Center.

But a report last week showed that, "About 62 percent of the people who were reimbursed for air-quality products were not eligible," according to The New York Times. Under political and social pressure to help people as quickly as possible, the newspaper reported, people were not required to provide proof of damages or a receipt for reimbursement of expenses.

"It was an honor system of sorts, one that relied on the belief that people shaken by a national tragedy would not turn around and use it for personal gain - in this case, a free air-conditioner as warm weather approached," the newspaper reported.

The result was a program that ended up costing three times its initial $15 million budget and paying for air conditioners for people who lived miles from the World Trade Center.

It's a cautionary tale for all of us.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency and the state of New York have since revised procedures for such programs to try to prevent abuses.

The truth is, it was the good side of human nature that led to our vulnerability to the abusers. We - through our government - wanted to help people who had been hurt.

Sometimes, compassion has a price beyond the contributions of money and time we make to the many charitable causes around us. We sometimes must give up a bit of innocence, as well.

It's a good thing that our capacity for compassion is refillable by a renewable resource - our capacity to love our neighbors.

That really is at the heart of this season of giving.