Doing Good Badly: When Intention Matters
Nicole Chao | Mar 01, 2010 | Comments 2
Haiti has recently suffered a 7.0 magnitude earthquake. When it seemed like this poor third-world country could not get any worse, it did. The country reeks with the stench of rotting bodies. With the lack of medical supplies and doctors, people are dying from minor infections that can usually be treated easily. To make matters even worse, with their shantytowns crushed in the rubble, thousands of families are left stranded, living on the streets. There is not nearly enough food, water or resources to go around. As a result, people turn on each other. They loot, beat and kill as a means to survive.
This is no place for a child to be.
Hundreds of miles away, thousands of men, women and children witness the trauma of the quake and helplessness of the people through their television screens, Internet homepages and newspapers. Benefit concerts are held. Food, water and medical supplies are collected and shipped. “Haiti” texts are sent to the American Red Cross. Yet, it doesn’t seem to get better. Day after day and night after night, devastating footage of Haiti continues to be documented that screams of desperation.
This very desperation deforms judgment — not just of the Haitian survivors, but also of Americans who want to help, but don’t know how. That’s exactly what Laura Silsby and her team of ten Christian missionaries felt. When the team from Boise, Idaho, vowed to help the Haitian children, they had a very unconventional idea of “help.” Determined to make a difference in peoples’ lives, the group set out to smuggle 30 young Haitian children to the Dominican Republic, promising their parents or caretakers safety, good care and an education. With her mind clouded by the terror and hopelessness around her, one Haitian mother justified her decision when she cried, “If someone offers to take my children to paradise, am I supposed to say no?” Though Silsby and her team had good intentions to help Haitian families, they did so very irresponsibly, and ended up doing more harm than good.
So does value lie in the act or in the intention? If it lies in the intention, then the ten missionaries did indeed do the right thing because Silsby herself insisted that the team “came [to Haiti] literally to just help the children. Our intentions were good.” However, if value lies in the act itself, then Silsby and her team did the wrong thing, as they wound up causing more devastation to Haitian families.
Why did Silsby try to illegally smuggle Haitian children across the border? Was it really out of duty to help the Haitian families? Or was it to alleviate her feelings of helplessness? I would say that it was the latter. I think, out of her feelings of desperation and helplessness through watching the horror, Silsby wanted to help because of her own slightly selfish reasons. She wanted to alleviate some of her own desperation and anxiety. I believe, deep down, her motives were slightly selfish, and because of this she did not help the children in completely good intentions.
Perhaps you don’t agree with me in this. Fine. Let’s go one step further.
Even if you argue that Silsby’s intentions were completely good, it is indisputable that she went about her task in a very irresponsible, dangerous, and illegal way. Considering Kant’s philosophy, did Silsby act in a way that her maxim could be applied in all circumstances at all times? No! She broke the law! Even if Silsby did have the right heart in helping the Haitian children, then she did indeed “do good badly.”
Evidently, it is very possible and common for people to do good badly. For example, when we join community organizations or projects for the sake of moral recognition and praise, we are doing good badly. When we help someone with hopes that they will return the favor, we are doing good badly. Even more so, when we try to help a tired, stressed out friend by cheating on a quiz, we are doing good badly.
Therefore, before you consider yourself a good, righteous person, examine your intentions. Then, examine the means by which you “do good.”
Nicole Chao is a second-year biological sciences major. She can be reached at By at chaon@uci.edu.
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Good article.
I submit to you there may be another way to “do good badly”. These churches which give their support to Ms. Silsby’s enterprises are full of people who are doing just that. They are blindly supporting someone because they believe “God’s work” is being done through that person.
This is a common theme in churches, from the support of missionaries, to the support of these children’s “homes”. that Silsby and others have claimed need of. Of course, the congregations were told that they would be taking little beggars off the street. This was not the case, however, as Ms. Silsby gathered up little children from villagers who could not care for them adequately. Why not get that money and help the entire families? Surely this money could have gone to help the families rather than to support care givers as they also care for the children, paying for buildings, utilities and necessities? Haitians live on much less than their white counterparts. These children belong at home. Ms. Silsby and her followers never took any little beggars off the streets. They instead mislead their financial backers and misled the relatives who gave up their kids in good faith.
It is entirely plausible that Silsby was trying to live off the misfortune of others, depending on white guilt of the churched to support her every need. If one looks at her doomed finances and plans for a youth home in Idaho, the picture becomes all too clear.
Make no mistake, there are thousands of people “doing good badly” by supporting those who claim to be helping children. Look at the trial of Jack Patterson’s Reclamation Ranch tactics, of Mack Ford’s New Bethany being forced to close, of Olen King’s child abuse charges, and the list goes on and on. This is not an isolated incident of church support gone wrong. It goes on to this day, all over our land.
Nicole,
I find your article insightful without a doubt. However, if you would allow me to bring up one point that I find the press and other writers are totally overlooking (or maybe purposely ignoring), it would be most appreciated.
I see that your entire piece centers around this question: “Why did Silsby try to illegally smuggle Haitian children across the border?” The two answers you relayed were these: “out of duty to help the Haitian families”, and “to alleviate her feelings of helplessness”. I will agree with you on the latter as well, but not for the same reason as you.
Since the story of Silsby’s and her companions arrests, I have followed this drama closely. The reason behind this is because approximately 29 years ago, I was a resident of a fundamental girl’s home in Louisiana called New Bethany. The director of this place (who also ran a boy’s facility under the same name) would tour all over the United States with select “residents”, prompting them to sing like angels and give testimony to the congregations of the numerous churches they would visit. Then this man would solicit church members for a “love offering” in order to finance his operation. He would declare that his “homes” were supported only by donations submitted by church members or private organizations who had been blessed by the singing and testimony of “his” girls(made to feel the obligation). Little did these church members know that the parents of these same children were invoiced monthly for the schooling and boarding of their children. The director of this home would claim from whatever church pulpit he might be standing behind at the time that his “girl’s refuge” was a christian, love-filled place where girls were given the opportunity to have a good education, horse-back riding, swimming, and all number of recreational activities. Please, if you would, remember this part, as it is important.
A rough calculation had been done recently by another former resident who found that possibly THOUSANDS of children had resided under this man’s “care”. While we girls lived in a roach-infested dormitory, being fed starch-laden (and who knows what else) food, and made to bathe in and drink water so sulphur-filled that it smelled of rotten eggs, the director and his family lived on the same property in a newly-built, two-story brick house with a separate water supply.
To get to my point, when the Wall Street Journal article came out a few weeks ago about Silsby’s failed “pre-Haiti” plans in Kuna, ID with the following description: “Ms. Silsby had equally grand ambitions closer to home, according to a local builder. The Idaho plan called for a “multi-million-dollar complex” for runaway children on a 40-acre lot in Kuna, Idaho…… Ms. Silsby told him it would have an indoor swimming pool, tennis courts and dormitories for the children….”, the familiarity in this description jumped right out at me.
Considering all of Silsby’s failed “business ventures” in Idaho (one I’m sure being her “children’s home”) before her jaunt to Haiti, I most certainly can see how she might feel helpless, and even desperate in finding a way to validate herself from a combination of a “christian/BUSINESS” standpoint.
I won’t go into all the OTHER things that happened over the space of three decades at New Bethany. I have included the URL for the website for that. You can also glean a plethora of additional information by simply googling the name.
Lasly, I would like to add that there are MANY homes operating as mirror images of New Bethany in the United States as we speak. As a matter of fact, TODAY 3/1/10, if you google “Reclamation Ranch” you will find that the director of THIS place was scheduled to be in court in Blount Co. AL facing some pretty serious charges. He is also blatantly asking for “donations” to his legal defense fund.
My primary question about this whole debacle is: Considering that Kuna, ID appears to be a hotbed of fundamentalism, containing churches that support places just like the ones I described above, could it be possible that Laura Silsby knew of them? Or maybe even knew someone who formerly/presently operate(d)/(s) or was employed at such a place, and filled her in on how much money she could make if she opened one? I think if this question could be answered, then quite a few more answers regarding her true intentions would come to the forefront. Thanks for letting me post here.