Now here's a gift you can give to me - answers to my many questions!

A recent message in Meeting came from 2 different people who decided they didn't necessarily believe in God, but decided to go ahead and do great things for others anyway, as if the only reason to do good is either, what - to honor God, to follow his beliefs, or maybe to get a chance to get into heaven? I wonder how many people do good things primarily for those kinds of reasons.

Why do we do good things? We do nice things for our partners and for our friends, tho never as often as I'd like. Sometimes we do nice things for people we'll never even meet. Sometimes we do it in hopes of seeing the look on the person's face when they receive our gift of whatever sort. Sometimes we never do receive any appreciation from the recipient, as when we send money to a charity. So why do we do it? Some sense of doing the right thing, feeling guilty because we have so much more than some others do? Or is it to give them a chance to get up to our level of comfort?

Most of all, it just struck me as odd that people felt like they were rebelling in some way by doing good things even if they didn't believe in God...which in the end, is probably all part of His or Her plan anyway.