Stephen Rowland: Helen Keller opened her eyes to truth while some still blind, deaf

Helen was a tiny girl of age seven with a mischievous spirit, and along with it, to put it bluntly, a mean streak.

She was unruly with a temper. One day when her mother went into the pantry closet, she closed the door on her and locked it with the old fashioned skeleton key. Ignoring her mother’s frantic beating on the door and cries for help, she went out and sat on the front porch giggling. It was over two hours later until family members returned to the house, took the key from Helen and let her poor mother out.

When an in-home teacher was summoned to help educate and “civilize” Helen, she followed her new teacher up the stairs and promptly locked her into the bedroom. This time she hid the key. It was never found. Rather than tear the door down, Helen’s father used a tall ladder outside the home to rescue the poor teacher out through the bedroom window.

Helen would never sit calmly at the dinner table like the other family members. She would walk around the table taking whatever she pleased off other’s plates. Her parents put up with this behavior because they felt pity for her. Helen was both blind and deaf since 19 months old due either to Scarlett Fever or meningitis. The world now knows her as the great Helen Keller.

That in-home teacher, Anne Sullivan, had her work cut out for her. When Helen tried to pilfer off her dinner plate, she swatted her hand. Helen went into screaming rage mode. Anne made the other family members leave the room. A full out food-fight and mini war ensued. It was a contest of wills. Helen had never been firmly told “No” before, there was a total lack of parental discipline due to her parent’s empathy for her condition. That food fight war went on for hours. Anne finally won. Helen finally relented to sitting at the table and even learned to fold her napkin.

If you know the story of Helen Keller, the rest is history.

She first made the connection between words (spelled into her hand with sign language) when her teacher ran cold water from the outside water pump over one hand while signing “water” into the other hand. Finally realizing that every object around her had a name, she went on a frantic search around the house demanding to know the names of everyday objects, learning dozens every day. Her IQ was later measured to be 160. She eventually graduated from Radcliffe College with her faithful teacher signing everything into her hand. She became a world famous lecturer advocating for people with disabilities and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Roosevelt on September 14, 1964.

My wife Susan and I visited her childhood home in Tuscumbia and learned many of these anecdotes about Helen from the tour guide. That water pump is still there in back of the house. Here’s what I find interesting about her life — that she had such a wild, unruly mean streak.

Many people today believe that infants are born totally innocent and good. The only way they later exhibit mean behavior is by learning it from their peers, or by being mistreated, or by living in exceedingly poor squalid conditions, or by being abused. Helen Keller experienced none of those things. Her stepbrothers were much older so she was raised much like an only child. Her parents were very loving and very well off. There were no “bad behavior” persons to learn from and imitate. She lived in a world of total darkness without a sound.

Most parents of toddlers today instinctively know that bad behavior doesn’t have to be taught. You don’t have to teach a toddler to lie, to steal that cookie, to throw a screaming hissy fit, to yank their siblings hair or even to bite, to fight over a toy when 15 other toys lay around that same room. They come up with those things all by their sweet little innocent selves. All toddlers are born selfish little narcissists — not one was ever born altruistic.

The simple fact is that toddlers have to be exhaustively trained to have good behaviors and not to be selfish.

The fact that we are innately selfish is at the root of what pastors used to call the “innate sin nature” or “original sin.” The Bible is absolutely correct on that point, our modern culture seems to be quite ignorant to it.

Helen’s teacher introduced her to a gentleman named Phillips Brooks who introduced her to Christianity. Helen later made that famous statement, “I always knew He was there; but I didn’t know His name.”

I think it’s a shame that so many people today with perfect vision and perfect hearing cannot see or hear Him. Many of us are more blind and deaf than Helen was; we simply don’t realize it.

This article originally appeared on The Daily Herald: Stephen Rowland: Helen Keller opened her eyes to truth