I caught a few minutes of a Dr. Phil show the other day. He was talking to a seventeen year old girl caught up in a prostitution ring. She had all kinds of crazy ideas about her self worth and her pimp who “cared about her.” That’s a common theme in these deals. But one thing she said floored me.

Dr. Phil asked: “Do you think the men you are having sex with are the cream of society?” She said something like: “They are people with OK lives, they just have something going on on the side.” The “something” was taking advantage of this young woman. She said it with such conviction. It just rolled off her tongue. It didn’t even sound like a script she had convinced herself to believe. It was so sort of matter-of-fact.

I didn’t catch who her johns were. I suspect they were older than she since seventeen year old guys probably aren’t going to be able to afford such activities. I wondered, were they professional men, married men, fathers, grandfathers, brothers, run-of-the-mill perverts….

I decided it didn’t matter. Sad as the activity and the trauma were for this young woman, it was that one thought she had that I could not let go of. “…OK lives with something going on on the side….” Wow.

So, where do we draw the line? I wish I could have asked her: “What percentage of a person should be good? 75%? 85%? 95%?” Or: “How much ‘on the side’ activity should we accept in a ‘good’ person? 25%? 15%? 5%?” Wow and double wow.

I thought back over my decades of life and there’s no way I can give myself a perfect score on being good. There have been episodes of stupidity, carelessness, insensitivity…. I probably hurt some people along the way in ways I don’t remember. There are plenty I remember too, and in some cases, I have made the effort to make amends. In other cases, I hope maybe the victims cut me enough slack with my acknowledgement of stupidity, carelessness, and insensitivity.

Back to this young woman’s comment. After thinking about it for a while, I realized that what troubled me was that she seemed to accept it as a fact of life. In essence, she thought “good” people do “bad” things. Now, let’s cut each other a little slack. Of course good people do bad things, but aren’t they usually under the categories I admitted to; stupidity, carelessness, and insensitivity? I think that’s a whole lot different than what she called a “good” guy taking advantage of a sex trafficking ring and a young woman prostituting herself to benefit her “caring boyfriend.”

Time was when “good,” “bad,” “right,” and “wrong” were objective qualities. Now, not so much. People kill each other over a pair of sneakers. Politicians and actors abuse their power every which way. Drug company executives double the prices of life-sustaining medications. And guys enslave teenagers and hire them out as prostitutes. But they’re basically “good” people, right? OK, “Good people can do bad things.” But in the examples above, they can’t claim stupidity, carelessness, or insensitivity. Well, maybe insensitivity, but they are smart and careful to plan their acts and cover their tracks.

I came across a sticky note where I had scribbled a quote. I don’t remember who said it, but it was: “Don’t do nothin’ during the day that will keep you awake at night.” Oh, I’ve done things like that but I try to make amends and work hard to do less and less of those things. How do you suppose the people doing bad things “on the side” would respond to that? Could they be so hardened and self-centered that NOTHING bothers them? I think good, bad, right, wrong, have no particular meaning for these people. They just do whatever they want to do because they can, and it feels good, and it benefits them. It’s all subjective to them.

I’ve described a wide range of behavior here. Accidents, carelessness, ignorance… I can live with those, especially when reparations are made.

But intentional evil, when people set out to hurt others, that’s not “on the side.” Intentional evil runs real deep, all the way to the core. I think some things are just plain wrong.