The Truth About Being a Decent Human

Ever wonder what it really takes to be a decent human? Spoiler: it’s not about winning every argument, getting likes, or even being perfect.

In this video, we explore what it means to be a person of good will—someone who seeks truth, admits mistakes, and tries to do the right thing even when it’s messy, inconvenient, or downright frustrating.

Think of it like this: Charlie Brown was struggling to put on a Christmas play, the angels had some wisdom, and Linus delivered the ultimate life lesson—peace comes to those who honestly try to be good, even when it’s hard.

Watch, laugh, and maybe learn a little about honesty, humility, and what it really means to live with integrity in a world full of shortcuts.

Transcript

You ever see the Charlie Brown Christmas special? That one where at one point during the show, Charlie Brown is so frustrated and so upset. He's trying to put on the Christmas play and and and everything's just going wrong. And he finally throws up his hands and he says, "Doesn't anybody know the real the true meaning of Christmas and that's when Lionus goes out uh onto the stage where they're going to perform the play and he's got his blanket and he says, "Sure, Charlie Brown, I know. (00:26) " Or something to that effect. I'm probably forgetting part of it. But that's where he goes to the the Bible to to Luke chapter 2 uh starting with chapter I'm sorry verse 8 and he says and there were in the same country shepherds watching and keeping the night watches over their flock and behold an angel of the Lord stood by them and the brightness of God shone round about them and they feared with a great fear and the angel said to them fear not for behold I bring you good tidings of great joy that shall be to all the people for this day is born to (00:58) you a savior who is Christ the Lord in the city of David. And this shall be a sign unto you. You shall find the infant wrapped in swallowing clothes and laid in a manger. And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly army praising God and saying, "Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace to men of good will. (01:20) " I don't know about you, but I I've heard that so many times it just kind of blipped over it because the angels say, "Peace to men of good will." Obviously men and women of goodwill. So any of you getting upset, don't go there. But to men of good will. And I thought, what what does that even mean to be a person of good will? Because that's who the angel said the peace is coming to. (01:43) So it's got to who are these people? And I I did a little, you know, looking around. And it's pretty much it's the people who are honest about wanting the truth. And as I understand it, back then the world was just a total mess that people were waiting on the Messiah because things were such so messed up. They knew the time was coming, but you know, you had the pagans on the one end were just total debauchery and the Jewish nation was was such a a mess in many ways. (02:18) and that we we read about so many of the the the laws or or things that the the Jewish elders passed along to the people was just there were so hard to keep up and everything. It was just it was a very difficult time. So this idea of goodwill that the angels would come just kind of fascinates me. But I said it's for people who are wanting the truth. (02:39) People who are pursuing the truth. People who are asking questions and they're not playing games. They're they're not looking for excuses about their behavior, but they're looking around at the moral depravity and they're like, "There's got to be something better. They're they're there must be." And so they they're seeking it. They're looking for it. (02:59) And they're not twisting things to the way they want them to be. They're not taking what they see and say, "Well, what's best for me?" or "Here here's what I'm being taught and told, but we're going to twist this and make it make it work for me and and and how I want things to be." These are people who realize that truth isn't relative. (03:18) That there is real truth. And as we find out later on when our Lord says, "I'm the way, the truth, and the life." Truth capital T. We're pursuing Jesus Christ. We're pursuing that truth. And we're going to try and get over every obstacle. And when usually the biggest obstacle is ourel. So as we go along, you find out that people who are people of goodwill, they're not perfect. (03:43) Uh they don't have it all figured out. There's just there there's no way. They keep falling and stumbling and getting up and trying again. But their heart is fixed on finding out what is really true. Not what the world tells them is true, not what they want to believe is true, but but truth again with that capital T. (04:02) And these are people who are, you know, there's no price that's too much to pay. Basically, even if something is inconvenient, if truth is inconvenient, even it proves that they're wrong and in their beliefs, they're going to they're going to want to know it. They're going to have the humility to say, "Okay, all along I I thought X, Y, or Z. (04:26) I thought it was the truth, and now I realize that's not the truth, and I and now I have to say, look, I was wrong about this. I didn't quite understand this, but now I know because I think there's a lot of people who don't want to know. There's a lot of people who are not people of goodwill. They they don't have an open heart. (04:46) They don't have a willingness to learn." and they just they they live in in a lifetime of denial. Why am I bringing all this stuff up? Because as you're as we're looking at being Catholic or becoming Catholic, to me, it's a matter of finding what is true after a long journey. But it's being honest enough with yourself of just saying, you know what, whatever the truth is, no matter how hard it is, I'm going to embrace it. (05:14) I mean, think about, go back to the time of Christ. people who, you know, gave up everything. Think about the first martyrs when they said, "No, I'm a Christian." When the when the pagans or the Romans or whoever the emperor said, you know, deny this Christ, burn incense to the to the pagan gods, like, "No, I my my God is the only one I truly worship and that I love." And they were killed for that. (05:36) That that's that to me is a person of goodwill. It's like you've you've come to the point where it doesn't matter what you think or what you feel. You just hold on to the truth and you're willing to die for it. You know, people who don't have a sense of goodwill, I think they refuse to really examine themselves or look at themselves. (05:59) They kind of ignore or reject their own faults. They'd rather not maybe just not see them or just pretend they're not there. much to the much to the misery of pretty much everybody around them. You know, they they kind of distort truth and they live by their own will. You know, you know, these people like, you know, a lot of times in this in this day and age, we talk about a narcissist, a person who's really just, oh, it's all, you know, it's they're everything. (06:24) Their truth is everything. But I think that's a lot of what this is is you're so enamored with yourself. You look at yourself in the mirror that you you're just not willing to look at your faults or you know any problems you may have in your life. You just you want to ignore them. You want to sweep them under the rug. (06:45) And to me, what's even worse is that when you instead of looking at yourself in the mirror, you turn around and you look at other people and you point out their faults and you look for how you can criticize and put other people down and just tear them apart. And to me, that even gets in with religion. I have seen so many people on social media, especially Twitter lately, for some reason, the people who tear Catholicism apart. (07:09) It just I scratch my head because it's so mean and it is so like like I said one of my other earlier podcasts, like people looked at me and said, "Well, you're you're your pope is the, you know, the Antichrist and the church is the of Babylon." Okay, great. But are you willing to look at the truth? Are you willing to actually look at that statement? I have a um a church up the road from me. (07:32) They they call themselves an apostolic church. And as the pastor was telling me, they they believe that at the death of the apostles that the whole Christian faith was just, you know, was off the rails. It was all distorted. It was all wrong. And of course, that's how the Catholic Church came about. It was corrupted. And you know, on and on as much, you know, there's a bunch of lies and they bastardize Christianity and everything like that. (07:58) But if you look at history, if you go back and look at what's actually happening, that's that's so far from the truth. But I know so many people who don't won't even look at that. They won't even say, "Hey, let's look at the facts. Let's look at this. What was really going on? What what why were people dying? Why were people being martyed? Why do they want to go to the arena and be torn apart by lions?" I was reading somewhere they put they wrapped people in, you know, skins of some kind and they let wild dogs tear them apart. (08:27) But here we are in in the 21st century and people just they they don't even have the curiosity to say, "Okay, what is true? I've been saying this all along." And that goes for everybody. I don't care what you know you know what your beliefs are or where you're coming from. If if you don't take time to examine it as a person of goodwill, you're looking for the truth, then what's the point? Then that means you're living a lie. (08:53) And you're doing it for what? you know, just for I don't know, comfort or for convenience. I think a lot of times too when you're when you're a person of goodwill, you basically you can you can admit your mistakes and it's not it's not easy at all. I mean, if you think about the people, if you've ever known anyone who's converted from some other faith or some other kind of Christianity or some other religion to being Catholic, a lot of times they're going to these people lose they lose their friends, they lose their family, they lose (09:25) so much. There's so much that, you know, they just that's not the same as it was before. There is no comfort. There is no convenience. You you actually you're suffering something for that truth. And I go back to the early martyrs. They they they gave their lives and they didn't care. And all these, you know, if you look at these historical writings, they were just these people looked at them in amazement. (09:49) It's like these, you know, these people were getting killed and tortured and have hooks put in them and being eaten by wild beasts and they were just amazed at them that they would that they would do this. They would give their they would give their lives for this. It's one of those, you know, apologetic thoughts where people are like, well, this Jesus never lived. He never died. (10:07) He never rose from the dead. But all these people are giving their lives for a lie, for something that never happened over centuries and centuries of time. Even to this day, there are there are martyrs, martyrs all over the world, Christian martyrs who are dying for their faith. These are people who have hearts of goodwill who search for the truth, found the truth, and they're willing to do anything to hold on to that truth. (10:32) They're willing to suffer anything for that truth." I think too that the goodwill is that it lets you see the Catholic Church for what it really is. And I know if you haven't looked at it and and even if you're a cradle Catholic, you may not even know what you have. And that's why I encourage you and hopefully as as we go along, we'll talk more about this about what the church teaches, what it stands for. (10:59) It's been around for over 2,000 folks, y'all. It it's, you know, it it's had some of the most bumbling figures in history, some of the most corrupt figures in history, which tell you tells you it's from God. What was that in the scriptures where the uh the Jewish leaders at the time were they wanted to, you know, punish the apostles for for preaching this this Jesus as they called it. (11:24) And I think it was Gamaliel who said, "If this is of God, there's nothing you can do against it. If it's not, it'll you know, it'll peter out." Well, here we are 2,000 years later. We're we're still going strong. So, I I think the the proof, and I've heard this said before, the proof that the Catholic Church is the the church of Jesus Christ is that it is still going, even though it's had some of the most bum bumbling, horrible people that have ever been around to to lead it and and claim to be part of it. (11:54) So if it's any consolation, if you see another Catholic who's just a bumbling idiot, well then you know that it's it's God that's that's leading us on, leading us forward. I think it pays well, it does pay. It pays to be a person of goodwill because the truth always comes out. I mean, we're living in a day and age where with social media and the internet and everything else, everybody has some kind of truth, but at some point the truth always comes out. (12:19) even if it's at if that's at the end of time and and Jesus Christ himself has to come and show us what the truth is. But it's there. It it's it's always there and it's always going to come to that because Satan doesn't win. The devil doesn't win. God wins. Uh my my last point I guess is that people of good will will actually find God. (12:43) God is not going to leave you leave you you alone. And if you're really if you're really searching for the truth, God is going to help you find it. It may take a long time to find it. But he looks at you and he rewards you and says, you know, well done, good and faithful servant, for pursuing the truth in a world today where there's so many lies. (13:04) There there's so many lies in the world and so much death and so much pain and so much suffering and everyone thinks they have an answer except the real answer. And the real answer is God and his church. So I would encourage you to be a person of good will. And by that be honest, be true. Be searching. (13:24) But be honestly searching. Know that if you're not moving forward and you're not searching, may maybe there's some pride there. Maybe there's something you don't want to be true. I've seen that a lot. It's I've seen that for myself. There are things in life that you just you just don't want them to be true because of the suffering that's involved because of the inconvenience because you may lose friends and family. (13:49) What we have to really believe though is that whatever happens on this earth will be rewarded at the end. You have you have to believe that that that's that's the truth. And Jesus said that's the truth. I am the way, the truth, and the life. I'm the resurrection. That's what we're fighting for. That's what this is all about. (14:08) This isn't about, you know, getting a shiny new car or a house or, you know, winning the lottery or something like that. This is winning eternity. Eternity of happiness, an eternity of joy. And right now, when you look at the world, there's so much sadness and murder and death and lying and darkness. You You can't tell me that this is all there is. (14:31) that there is no justice, that there is no truth, that that this is the misery we're all going to have and then we die and then that's the end of it. Be a person of goodwill. Be a person who's willing to go the distance. Be a person who's willing to put in put in your all to to find the truth. I believe that's going to lead you to the Catholic faith, whether you're Catholic or not. (14:52) I know a lot of Catholics out there who just, you know, kind of shrug their shoulders. Nah, I'm I'm Catholic. Yeah, whatever. It's when you know what you have. It's It's like Yeah. It's like winning the lottery. It's like like Yeah. having treasures that that you can't even you know imagine and these treasures last forever. (15:13) Is it worth it? Only you can decide that. Only you can decide if if you know being rich in this world of you know having the nice car, the nice house, the nice spouse, wife, husband, all the goodies, all the gadgets. If that's all that makes you happy, if that's if that's all life is, then I then I guess you're good to go. But I I want to encourage you to seek truth no matter what it costs. (15:36) It may cost you dearly, but if you're of any age and you look back at how fast it's already gone, that's how the rest of your life is going to go. It's going to be gone before you know it. So spend your time. Be a person of goodwill. Seek the truth. Be honest. Be an example of the person that you want other people to be. (15:57) Those people who are honest and true, who are working really hard to get rid of their vices and working on virtues. Isn't that what we all want? We want to be around people who are honest, who are true, who that we can depend on, that we can trust. So start by being that person. And the only way to be that person is to really run after the truth, the the truth of God himself and his one holy Catholic and apostolic church. (16:25) I hope that gives you food for thought. If nothing else, don't give up. Keep going. Don't stop. God will reward you. Okay? We'll talk to you soon. Thanks."