Happy. A little boy wore a gleaming smile to match the word.
Across the page, the same little boy had giant tears rolling down his face to illustrate “sad”.
I turned the page to continue reading to Tirzah Mae, but then stopped short – for the next two words were “good” and “bad”.
After a bit of quick thinking, I told Tirzah Mae that the words were “kind” and “naughty”.
I won’t be buying that particular book for Tirzah Mae, nor will I be checking it out of the library again for her or her siblings.
Good and bad are such loaded words.
In one sense, the illustrations were apt – showing good or bad behaviors. But the rest of the book was describing opposites that modify not behaviors but the child. While each page included only one word, a parent could have “read” the sentence “The child is [insert word].”
“The child is happy.”
“The child is sad.”
“The child is alert.”
“The child is sleepy.”
But when it came to “good” and “bad”?
“The child is good.”
“The child is bad.”
It doesn’t fit my theology.
There is a sense in which every child is good. There is a sense in which every child is bad. But neither have to do with the child’s behavior.
Every child is good in the way that God declared Adam and Eve “very good” after creating them. Every child is created by God and, in some small or large way, reflects God’s image. In that, he is good.
Yet every child is bad, in that every child is born sinful. “No part of [him] is untouched by sin, and therefore no action of [his] is as good as it should be, and consequently nothing in [him] or about [him] ever appears meritorious in God’s eyes.” (J.I. Packer’s definition of total depravity from Concise Theology.) In that, every child is bad.
To suggest that a child is “good” because he engages in kind behavior and that he is “bad” when he engages in unkind behavior undermines both the innate “goodness” and the innate “badness” of a child.
I would not want a child of mine to think that she is only valuable in my eyes when she engages in kind behavior. She is valuable because she is a human, created in the image of God.
I would not want a child of mine to think that she is only bad when she engages in naughty behavior – and to think that by changing her behavior she can change her innate badness.
No, I want my daughter (and our unborn baby and every child who enters our family after that) to know that she is precious because God made her. I want my daughter (and our unborn baby and every child who enters our family after that) to know that she is born a sinner and acts sinfully because it’s who she is.
I pray daily that my daughter would recognize that there is nothing she can do to make herself “good”. Every day, I pray that she would recognize her inability to save herself from her sinfulness. Every day, I pray that she would fall upon the mercy of Christ to make her good.
And I want the words I use to help her to recognize her need for a Savior – not to encourage her to cling to works righteousness.
Am I too picky about words? Are there any common phrases that get your guff?
I remember struggling with mine over saying “Good boy” when they did something, for the same reasons. I wanted to encourage their good actions but didn’t want them to get “good” confused with character/behavior. Someone suggested saying they were a “big boy” rather than a good boy when they did certain things, especially things that showed they were maturing, because they have that drive to be be thought “big boys.” With my grandson we say “good job” instead of “good boy,” probably will say “big boy” when he’s older enough for that to mean something to him.