The Good

I saw a bumper sticker the other day which said: "Humankind: Be Both."  Pithy.  Provocative.  And somehow unsatisfying.  Kindness, while a positive thing from which we all might benefit, remains only a facet or shadow of the greater thing which is the Good.  Opting always for kindness means that we will sometimes miss the Good.  Making excuses for a substance-addicted family member may be a kind thing, preserving that family member from some short-term discomfort or humiliation, but it is not a good thing.  In psychological parlance, it enables the addiction.  Kind, but not Good.  This may seem like an extreme example.  Here's a less extreme one.  Consistently driving your kid to school because he or she has missed the bus.  Very kind.  If it is an occasional occurrence.  In this case it might even be seen as good.  But where the missing is habitual all we are doing is teaching our teen that if they sleep in, someone will fix it for them.  They will be in for a rude awakening some day.  So in that case, it is neither kind nor good.

But what about the Good - this which is larger than simple kindness?  To be sure we often do that which is good, but when we do not, why?  Why do we fail to do the Good?  I can think of two reasons, there are undoubtedly more.  First, we do not do the good because we reject it for some other thing which is positive but less.  Kindness is one example.  But there are others.  We will often sacrifice the Good for the useful or utilitarian.  We do that which makes the most useful sense, or economic sense, or, to follow Freud, that which makes the most pleasure sense.  Again, usefulness, sound economics and pleasure are all positive things, but they are often morally less than the Good.

The second reason we do not do the Good is because we claim we can't know it.  There are so many shades of grey in life and situations.  How are we to know the Good?  Some thoughts on this from two characters, one fictional and one real.  In The Lord of the Rings, the riders of Rohan ask Aragorn how, in these complicated times, men might know good from ill.  Aragorn responds, "As he has ever judged...good and ill have not changed since yesteryear; nor are they one thing among Elves and Dwarves and another among Men."*  Aragorn puts it baldly in front of us.  The Good is knowable and has always been.  I feel this when I opt for the lesser things, usefulness or pleasure.  The Good is before me and I choose other.  It's not that I don't know.

St. Paul, while he does not mention moral good in this text, says something very similar in the first chapter of Romans:
"For what can be know about God [including his Goodness] is plain to them, because God has shown it to them.  For his invisible attributes, namely his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made." 
(Romans 1:19-20 ESV - comment in brackets mine)

What is at least as interesting as why we don't do the Good, is why we do.  Even here I think there are good reasons and bad.  For all of us, if we learn right from wrong as children, we learn to do the Good to avoid punishment and to gain reward.  This is right and proper for the punishment and the rewards are part of the teaching, the shaping of our souls.   But this, like a scale played during piano practice, or conjugations done when learning a language,  is a drill to shape and form something in us - conscience or understanding of the Good.  If as adults we are continuing to do the Good for fear of punishment, we have missed something.  We have not yet come to love.  St. John says this:
"There is no fear in love, for perfect love casts out all fear.  For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love."
(I John 4:18 ESV)

More on love in a minute.

The other reason we do the good I take from a nursery rhyme.
Little Jack Horner
Sat in the corner,
Eating a Christmas pie;
He put in his thumb,
And pulled out a plum,
And said 'What a good boy am I!

We sometimes do the Good in order to congratulate ourselves, "What a good boy and I!"  Or possibly so that others will congratulate us.  This ultimately is a variation on the punishment theme, just its opposite side.  We do good things because we want people to think good of us, to approve of us and appreciate us.  The problem with this, and the fear of punishment goodness, is that the Good can easily get warped in pour minds to mean "whatever the other wants."  Here we are easily prey to manipulation, sometimes dong what is not good in order to obtain the approval of, or avoid the wrath of those whose opinion we value.  It's how we get involved in gangs and why we get engaged in cliques in our school, workplace or neighborhood.

But there is another reason for doing the Good and it is what the childhood punishment and reward system is meant to grow in us.  And that is the love of the Good.  There is a big difference between doing what is Good because we are afraid that if we don't God is going to get us, and doing it because we love it.  I remember distinctly the day this realization came to me - that God was not asking me to do the Good but rather to love it.  And the doing then flows much more easily out of the loving.

The Good, together with the True and the Beautiful, are things we are made to love. And in loving them we become more truly human.  And something quite a bit more than kind.

*J.R.R. Tolkien, The Two Towers