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What Does It Mean to Be Good?
After listening to the most recent GLOP podcast, I started to think about the meaning of being good. John Podhoretz mentioned the death of Gene Wilder; he shared that Wilder had been obsessed with being good. Anything taken to an extreme, such as an obsession, can be a detriment to our lives: the obsession becomes the center of our universe and everything else is secondary. The story caused me to think about my own commitment to being good, what that meant to me, and how I acted upon it.
As a child, I practiced being good to avoid getting into trouble! But as I matured, I realized that intuitively I wanted to do good because G-d expected me to. Finally, I chose to be and do good because I wanted to serve G-d. Although goodness is partly an “inside job,” it is also demonstrated in how we act in the world. So I can think about good things I’d like to do, but unless I actually do them, I am not fulfilling my understanding of being good.
I spent a little time exploring how others saw being good. In one article the writer suggested the following:
Always ask yourself: Am I defining “good” as that which looks good to the fast-food-Internet-Hollywood segment of society, or am I defining “good” as that which has real meaning, a deep message, and makes a valuable contribution to society?
To be good, we also are called to do things that we really don’t want to do, or that are unpleasant. To be with my husband who has a condition that causes him to cough, often loudly, can be challenging. How can I be a good person around him and in a way that helps him? There are times when I think I can’t bear another moment. But then I stop my flailing thoughts, breathe deeply, continue my knitting or reading, and allow him to do what he needs to do; that, for me, is being good.
I also love to lead my meditation group and to be a hospice volunteer. Visits with friends and being present for them are also ways to be good. Being good for me also demands that I only do as much as I can, physically, spiritually and emotionally. Lots of people spread more goodness than I do, but I know my limitations, and to be good for everyone, including myself, I find a balance in those activities.
Am I always good? Hardly! Sometimes I am selfish, self-centered and clueless. But I am also human. And like many folks, I do my best.
Some of you may think that you do things in the unfolding of your lives but you don’t think about whether they are good or not. You just do them because they call to be done. In my view, that is the actualization of a deeply held goodness.
So my heart goes out to someone like Gene Wilder. I expect that he was a good person, even if he was obsessed with being good. My hope for him is that he was able to embrace his goodness in ways that were fulfilling and rewarding for him, as well as for others.
So what does it mean for you to be good? What is your own definition? Why is it important to you? How do you teach it to your children? How do you act upon it in the world?
Published in Religion & Philosophy
“all we like sheep have gone astray, we have turned every one to his own way, and the Lord has laid upon Him the inequity of us all. ” From your post it sounds like you know the truth. Thanks for your comment.
You, dear one, are a shining light for many. I see fall as a time for retreat, a drawing in, and I think sometimes that is a good thing. Thanks so much for your kind comments.
That’s fine. I find in my own life that new challenges crop up where my habitual response just doesn’t seem to fit. I can go with that reaction, or I can test whether there might be an adjustment that is call for. Those times are rare, but it’s helpful to have that inclination available to me.
These kinds of posts come and go, and I’d like to think that sometimes they go beyond Jewish/Christian but expand into the generally philosophical. You and I disagree: it is possible for man to be good, but not perfectly good. In Judaism, we are created in G-d’s image and have the potential to be good, but G-d doesn’t expect us to be perfect in any area, nor do I believe we need to aspire to that. The focus on sinfulness comes out of Christianity. In Judaism, we are called to be good, as good as we can, so that we can creatively serve G-d and continue G-d’s creation. And when one is creative, one is bound to mess up. As long as we try to learn from our mistakes, we’ll do fine. Btw, although we differ, I very much appreciate your expressing your point of view!
Fun conversation to start!
Pretty much the same thing it means for everyone else to be good.
I’m too tired and have much to do already, and it seems I came more than 60 comments late to this party. So I’ll toss out an Augustinian answer: To be good is to love as we ought to love–as God commands us to love, as is appropriate to our nature as human beings, and as makes us happy. Not that we are good yet, but we must become good. There are many books written about that. Here’s one. And here’s a much, much better one.
Again, I’m tired. So I’ll just toss out a thought cross-fertilized from moral philosophy and Star Trek.
Mill: The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one.
Kant: The needs of the one outweigh the needs of the many.
In his book, Economics in One Lesson, Henry Hazlitt wrote:
I think this is as good a definition of wisdom as any I’ve read: Before acting, consider the consequences of my actions – not just in the short term and for myself – but in the long term and for others.
“And Lao Tzu had a hierarchy, with goodness number two:
When Tao is lost there is goodness. When goodness is lost, there is kindness. When kindness is lost, there is justice. When justice is lost, there is ritual. Ritual is the husk of faith and loyalty, the beginning of confusion.”
Whoa. I’m sitting here below on my boat, gentle rainy night, drinking the last of a bottle of something, listening to a piano piece by some nutter called Satie thinking yeah, that’s it, that’s perfect.
Then I’m enjoying this post and all you all have to say when I come across this quote above. It stops me. I think about it awhile, Satie to Schumann to Debussy (thank you Pandora – that’s helping.)
I am thinking about how much of my life has been spent thinking and arguing down there in the realm of those last couple – valuing kindness, justice, ritual as the worthwhile aims.
Goodness is above all these, by this hierarchy. But it’s still something you do. The Tao seems to be something you are. I keep thinking about the Avatar in the Scott Adams book “God’s Debris”. Maybe this is what he was trying to get across.
This is a brilliant book. Available on Audible, four hours of pure wisdom that you must make time for. Life-changer.
[I have not read all the comments.]
That is Latin for “I don’t understand Greek.” @misthiocracy
This is a mine field of a subject. I would go for some simple things.
Susan, you may like some of Alan Morinis’s books on Mussar , the Jewish concept of practical ethical improvement. He’s been working on bringing some of the classical techniques to a contemporary audience, and he does it quite well. Optimistic and change oriented, not at all heavy-handed.
I often wonder why kaballah, which is often so abstract, has captured the popular imagination, whereas mussar has not. Mussar seems much more practical for us ordinary people.
I wonder why “good” comes across as so boring. It reminds people of the Church Lady or someone trying to stop people having fun. It looks like “oatmeal” in a world of spicy food.
Lordy you don’t make easy questions do you? I don’t try to be good, I try to appear better than I am so I don’t lose the respect and love of my family, all of whom are among the best people I know. My youngest, after we’d moved him to a new country and new school for the 7th time, told me that he’d seen that people were so different, behaved so differently and valued different things and this meant to him that people could choose to be the kind of person they wanted to be. That’s what you did. He chose to become a Catholic, a very serious student, and a person who didn’t drink or smoke or do the dumb harmful stuff kids do, to discern what is the right decision and to make it. So what’s good? I don’t know. Clearly one can choose to try to be good but without our inherited religious traditions and the best of Western Culture as it was informed by those traditions it’s hard to know what that means. We can’t start from zero and use reason the way moderns assert we can.
Again, I would commend one to Alan Morinis. He uncovers a lot of buried treasure.
Do I have to buy the book or will you share somethings with us? What key ideas helped you?
I thank you for your patience and openness to dialogue. At any point, feel free to tell me to go away and I will. Having said that, let me push your reasoning a little. Both Jews and Christians are “people of the Word” meaning we believe G-d has revealed himself to his people in scripture. I don’t claim to be an OT scholar, but from what little I know, I don’t see any indication of G-d’s demands on us (even if look only to the Torah) as being so subjective-requiring us only to be “as good as we can be” as long as we are “creative” and “learning from mistakes.” Let’s look at just a few examples from the Torah…
When Adam and Eve broke the only rule G-d gave them, he didn’t say, “oh well, you guys did as best as can be expected.” No, he banished them from Eden, cursed their work and child-bearing–their only hope being a seed of Eve who would someday crush the Satan’s head.
When the Egyptians enslaved the Israelites, no credit was given for Egyptian creativity or willingness to learn from mistakes, G-d sent ten plagues the final of which resulted in the death of every first-born male.
When Moses came down off Mt. Sinai and caught the Israelites worshiping a golden calf , no “boys will be boys” or “just learn from your mistakes” but he sent a plague among them.
In Leviticus, He says “For I am the L–D your G-d. Consecrate yourselves therefore, and be holy, for I am holy.”
When David commits adultery with Bathsheba and then has her husband killed, David realizes his guilt and shame and pens Psalm 51.
I could go on but you get the picture. (Forgive my tiresomeness.) But where does scripture say that G-d views sin lightly or grades on the curve? (I know that is not exactly what you said, to be fair.) The way I read the OT (especially the Torah) is that G-d has set out strict rules for our behavior and expects perfect obedience. I have failed miserably to obey him. Where does one like me go for hope?
Is my only hope really just trying harder…do better next time…be more creative…learn from my mistakes. If that is my only hope, of all men, I am most to be pitied.
Quit scarin’ me.
Well, we really have two choices–like the boy in Sixth Sense. (Maybe no one here ever saw that movie or remembers it). We can either pretend the scary things aren’t there, or we can deal with them. Your choice.
You are still scarin’ me haha. But you’re right of course.
“I feel you” as they say in the modern vernacular, @rightangles. I would never be able to sleep at night if I felt I had to carry alone the burden of my sins, for they are great and they are many.
I have raised two good kids which counts for something. And when a discussion came up as to what my kids thought my career should be (if I were starting all over) she said “You should be a social worker, since you are always taking care of and looking our for others.”
So taking care of others, but in a long term positive way. It is easy to be “good” and give the vagrant $5 – that makes you feel good. And it is easy to do nothing. But helping people in a long-term positive way, that is more difficult.
And that is why I think the Kabbalah is more popular than the Midrash referenced early in the thread. If you read the Kabbalah, it makes you feel spiritual but it does not inform you as to how to be good and how your current behavior may not be good.
I’ve heard that not only is your life played back to you, but that it’s played back to every other rational creature in the universe.
Just do your duty. That seems like the basic and adequate requirement.
(What is your duty? What if your duties conflict? That’s where it gets endlessly interesting.)
Susan, being good to me means treating people fairly…even better than fairly, at times, but mostly just being able to look myself in the mirror each morning with no regrets.
The very fact that we worship with psalms penned by a loathsome adulterer has always been to me uncomfortable evidence that God does “grade on a curve”, if I were to use that language…
I realize perhaps nobody else sees it that way, but if moralistic perfection were all that mattered to me, I would reject the psalms as coming from a morally degenerate man, not worship with them. And if I, miserable sinner that I am, knew to intuitively reject “bigger” sinners like that if I had to “grade” them, then how much more easily could God, who is morally perfect, reject them? And He didn’t. Which, if we’re only talking in terms of grades, does look suspiciously like God curving it in David’s favor, or David getting special extra credit…
Alternately, maybe saying that God does/doesn’t “grade on a curve” makes about as little sense as saying “extra credit” assignments with God are possible. Which I suppose is the point you were trying to make anyhow :-)
I was going to respond to the deficiencies in several comments here but I have this damned plank in my eye…
Well, as long as it has a knothole big enough to strain a camel ;-)
I continue to say that the doing is very important. It is serving others that is so important. Thanks, Bruce. And wherever you are sounds lovely!