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Who are your favourite characters in literature and movies? Perhaps Bruno in The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird, Oscar Schindler in Schindler’s List, Gandalf the Grey in The Lord of the Rings, Andy Dufresne in The Shawshank Redemption, Abbé Faria in The Count of Monte Cristo, Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, or even Othello in Shakespeare’s play of the same name?
Did you notice the common trait they share? They are all kind-hearted people. But why are we naturally drawn to characters like these? Why don’t we Favor characters like Amon Göth from Schindler’s List, Fernand de Morcerf from The Count of Monte Cristo, or Iago from Othello?
The reason lies in a powerful force that influences us all—a benign force: the Law of Universal Justice. As Martin Luther King, Jr. famously said:
“The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”
This principle ties deeply to our attraction to noble characters. If we were merely biological beings, shaped only by survival instincts in a cold, indifferent universe, love, kindness, and self-sacrifice wouldn’t exist. Good and evil would lose their meaning entirely. We wouldn’t be drawn to moral characters, because morality itself would be irrelevant. Good and evil can only exist in a moral universe.
But if good exists, how do we define it? Why do we feel compelled to do good if our existence is purely a result of chance, dictated by "survival of the fittest"? One person gives generously and finds happiness, while another inflicts pain and suffers from a guilty conscience. The difference lies in that gentle nudge we all feel—a natural inclination toward what’s right.
Romans 2:14-15 (NIV) captures this idea well:
“Indeed, when Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves, even though they do not have the law. They show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts sometimes accusing them and at other times even defending them.”
Interestingly, science has also discovered the therapeutic value of random acts of kindness, not random acts of evil. So why do we lean toward kindness? Perhaps it’s because we are designed to do so.
Scripture quotations [marked NIV] taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version Anglicised Copyright © 1979, 1984, 2011 Biblica. Used by permission of Hodder & Stoughton Ltd, an Hachette UK company. All rights reserved. ‘NIV’ is a registered trademark of Biblica UK trademark number 1448790.
