The Ripple Effect

In the movie Evan Almighty, God (Morgan Freeman) tells Evan to build an ARK and that the ARK will save humanity. After Evan had built the ARK and the “flood” hadn’t destroyed the earth, Evan questioned God as to why he made him build it. God said it wasn’t so much the Ark that was important but the Act of Random Kindness. That’s all it takes to get the ball rolling – an act of random kindness. Imagine if everyone did one act of random kindness every day? Wouldn’t the world be a better place? We all know the story about dropping a pebble into the centre of the pond and the ripples travel on the surface to the edge of the pond. When the ripples reach the edge of the pond they go beneath the surface of the water and return to the centre of the pond. Scientists would say this is ‘cause and effect.’ In Christianity one could equate this analogy to ‘what you reap you sow’. In Eastern religion the equivalent would be karma. So one could say that science, as well as spirituality or religion backs up the notion that whatever you put out there, it is going to come back to you. Furthermore, it is said that there are only two emotions. Namely, Love and fear. Love comes from God and fear does not. God gives us free will to choose whether we want to operate from a place of Love or fear. However, we need to bear in mind that with choices come consequences. In the Christian Bible it mentions that the wages of sin is death. One should not interpret this as a physical death, but rather a spiritual death. A person is cut-off from God. For the purpose of simplicity, one could argue that sin is the equivalent to operating from a place of fear. If one is continually operating from a place of fear, one is cut-off from Love, namely God, because the ‘wages of sin is death’. If we go back to our analogy of the dropping of the pebble into the pond, it means that the fear we are putting out is going to come back to us. Therefore, it makes perfect sense for a person to operate from a place of Love. After all, who doesn’t want to receive Love? As mentioned earlier, God gives us free will. He / She does not judge or label a choice good or bad. That’s a human thing. God merely holds us accountable for our choices through Spiritual Laws like karma and ‘you reap what you sow’. While Evan Almighty was building the ARK, he went through many trials and tribulations. However, he started to operate from a place of Love by doing acts of random kindness and things started to fall into place for him, his family and the community as a whole. So you see, if we start by just doing one small act of random kindness, we not only make the world a better place for ourselves, but for our community as well. To use a Ghandi quote that has been given much press lately, “Be the change that you want to see in the world”.

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