Children Moral Short Story – The point of being good
Photo credit: xenia from morguefile.com
After we had left the Perambur Church half a kilometer behind, my daughter said musingly, “Doing good, being good, is not really a good for us.”
Where was this leading? My daughter is a like a doe. She is skittish and shy and sometimes one must be careful not to push for an answer.
“Can you explain what you mean?” I asked cautiously.
“I am thinking about Jesus Christ,” she said.
It was Good Friday, and we had just passed by the celebration of the Funeral of Jesus at the Perambur Church, on the way to her Karate class.
“The man did only good, all his life,” she added, “He helped people and made them happy. He was a teacher, also, wasn’t he?” I nodded, so she carried on: “And he taught his students to do good, and respect others. But look what people did to him.”
This was no easy discussion. If I didn’t handle it right, she would miss the point about being good. I wished my husband had been around, he could handle such questions more easily. Besides, it was his genes in her that made her think this way.
“When you do good to some others may not like it,” I ventured to respond.
“Exactly,” she pointed out, “Therefore, there is no point in doing good. If he hadn’t done good for the Jews, the Romans would not have been angry with him.”
“Perhaps, some people can’t help being good,” I suggested. “Doing good makes such people feel good.”
“Well, I am not talking about myself,” she said, with finality, “I am going to do good anyway. If others don’t like it, what can I do about that? But in general, I still think, good doesn’t always happen to you, because you do good.”
I couldn’t argue with that.
We were reaching the Karate class. She waved to me and ran up the stairs; then she ran down again, and said, “Our Karate master is a good person. But if they try to nail him to a cross, I think he will break the wood and escape. It is a good idea to be prepared for what bad people can do, when you want to be good.”…and then she was gone.
I stood for a while waiting to see if she would come down again, then sat in the car contemplating her debate till she returned an hour later. She was full of other news and we didn’t continue this discussion.
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