Why I will no longer tell my kids to "be good"

"Be good."

I heard that line spoken tonight as my wife and I watched the end of Deep Impact, a film about survival and death in the face of an Extinction Level Event -- a cataclysmic impact with Earth by a comet.  I enjoy it for how it causes one to introspect.  I enjoy the acting overall -- I love Robert Duvall, and I think Téa Leoni is a very underrated actress.

I'd issue a spoiler alert here, but the movie was from before Y2K was a major concern.

I love the fact that Morgan Freeman, as President of the United States, at one point tells the nation that "I believe in God" (and I love the irony of the fact that he actually played God in Bruce Almighty and Evan Almighty) and that "I believe that God hears all prayers, even though sometimes the answer is no" (the second one is a slight paraphrase).  It is refreshing to hear such a line from Hollywood, despite the fact that we need to look back to the late '90s for God to be mentioned in some sort of a reverent manner in a film.

But this post is not about the two hours of post-editing, post-production film.  It's about one second -- roughly the time it takes to say the words, "be good."  They were uttered by a space-mission captain via video feed to his roughly eight-month-old son, moments before finalizing a mission from which he would never return.

It made me think of how weak that statement is.


It's two words.  And both carry great meaning.  "Be" is the very word of existence.  It was the verb God breathed during many phases of creation in Genesis 1.  "Let there be light."  "Let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters ... "  "Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens ... " Then in Genesis 2, when He creates woman, he says, "It is not good for man to be alone."

To be is to exist.

"Good" has, on the other hand, two meanings in our modern vernacular.  In one sense, it is a state of condition.  This is often used incorrectly, as in

Person 1: "How are you feeling?"
Person 2: "I am good."

It is wrong, but accepted.  The correct response for Person 2 is, "I am doing well."  That is because "good" and "evil" are not opposites.  "Good" is all that truly exists, and "evil" is the absence of "good" in the same way that darkness itself does not exist but is merely the absence of light.  God is the very essence of "good" because in the presence of God there can be no evil, which proves the point.  Evil exists in the same way that dark exists: as the void left by the removal of its counter component.

But they are both recognized as states nonetheless, and are inert within the confines of the Earth so long as there is no commission.  They require an action.  "Good" doesn't just happen when someone recognized as "good" enters a room.  No, they must commit an act, because love -- another name for good -- does not exist when trapped solely within a single heart.  Nor does the room become more evil by their departure; rather, the room becomes more evil when their departure results in less good being done there.

So I submit to you that the statement "be good" shall henceforth be changed to "do good" so that we can instruct our children not simply to exist in a state of false-but-presumed "good" on their own, but that they extend "good" to others through their actions and eradicate the mere option for evil to fill the void left by their inaction.

But that is merely half the story.  "Good" is the presence of love being done, specifically.  But love given only on occasion is only occasionally preventing evil.  Love being given at all times, in all situations, regardless of race, creed, language, age, gender or any other trait describes the condition, the state of being.  We are back to the beginning, now, of the discussion of "be good" and the simplistic, exclusionary nature inherent in the statement.

The life of the Christian is not one of mere specific acts, nor a collection of those acts, but the attitude of the heart in which those acts are committed.  And the attitude of the heart, while prone to fluctuation in even the greatest of people, is a dynamic, constantly measurable metric.  It is our being.  It is what makes us more than a collection of molecules.  It is the rate at which we allow God's love to exude from within us, and there is a scale by which to measure it: Jesus Christ.  No one will ever top out the scale, but it can be described in general terms.  It is a rate, and therefore an amount.  "Great" and "small" describe amounts, and coincidentally we also use them to describe someone's personality.  That's no accident.  And I, for one, am shooting for "great".  It's not easy, and I feel like I spend far less time in the "great" part of the scale than I would like.  But I keep trying, and I encourage the same attitudes in my kids as I expect out of me.

So I will henceforth strive to not tell my kids to "be good".

I will, instead, tell them to "do good -- but be great."