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Face To Faith - Author trusts in human nature |
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If faith, as the Bible says, is “the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen,” then Catherine Ryan Hyde has faith in human nature. She is the author of “Pay It Forward,” the fictional story of Trevor, a 12-year-old boy who comes up with a plan to change the world. (You might remember the movie, although Hyde didn’t help produce it. The movie made several significant changes, many not to her liking.) Hyde’s address to a crowd of about 275 people at St. John’s Episcopal Church on Thursday night served as the climax of the second annual citywide reading program, “Same Book, Same Time,” sponsored by the Johnson City Public Library. Trevor’s plan is elegantly simple: Do kind things for three other people, asking each in turn to help three other people, and so on. Instead of paying the kindness back, pay it forward. Get it? Exponential math meets the Golden Rule. The novel is a testament to Hyde’s belief that people are essentially good. It’s a message she encourages through Web sites and a small grant-making organization (www.payitforwardmovement.org and www.payitforwardfoundation.org). “I think people live with this idea to treat each other with kindness,” Hyde said in a phone interview last week. “A phrase like ‘pay it forward’ makes something more cohesive. We’re all speaking the same language.” One notable absence in the book is God. Hyde said she omitted God intentionally, but not for “an anti-God reason.” “I don’t want people leaving world change up to God at this stage,” she explained. “People are waiting for some greater thing to make changes. But if we do our footwork, make our contribution, then we can handle this.” She is less certain about God than about people. Her parents — one Presbyterian and another Jewish — encouraged her to make up her own mind about religion, and that’s what she did. Today, she’s drawn to Eastern religions. God, in her view, is more of a force than a person. “I strongly believe in a power greater than myself who is in charge of the whole universe,” she said. “But I can’t put (my beliefs) in a neat category.” A greater power is very much present in an earlier novel, “Electric God,” the story of Hayden Reese, an emotional time bomb of a man who’s been on the outs with God for most of his life. Eventually, he finds peace in acceptance of God (“or something along those lines,” as his wife says) and in forgiveness. The story echoes the biblical story of that angry prophet, Jonah. While one book excludes God and another makes him a central character, the author said “Pay It Forward” and “Electric God” aren’t contradictory. “They come from different places,” Hyde explained. While one says “we can’t run the universe, we have to leave that up to God,” the other says “we can be kind to each other.” Her confidence in humanity remains intact, even in a world marred by events like terrorist attacks. “When we’re faced with this brutal human cruelty, people want to band together and say, ‘We’re not really like that,’ ” she said. “I think there’s almost a backlash against that kind of perversion of human nature.” What remains a mystery, she admits, is why people so predictably fall into unkindness, why humans even need reminders about human nature. Maybe that’s what makes an idea like “pay it forward” a matter of faith. |
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9/20/2003