Almighty Dad | A stay at home dad blog

You think it’d be easy to tell your kid, “Don’t lie, don’t cheat, be honest, and good things will happen.”  But it’s unfortunate that life doesn’t always reward our honesty.  Sure, we tell ourselves that it does, but does it?  Are all happy people good people?  Are people who lie and cheat any less satisfied with themselves than people who stick to honesty and good deeds?  I don’t think we can truthfully say so.  John Steinbeck said it best.   

“It always seemed strange to me,” said Doc. “The things we admire in men, kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling are the concomitants of failure in our system. And those traits we detest, sharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism and self-interest are the traits of success. And while men admire the quality of the first they love the produce of the second.”  

    

 “Who wants to be good if he has to be hungry too?” said Richard Frost.  

   

Cannery Row – John Steinbeck  

The Choices People Make and Their Excuses  

I’ve seen spammers take advantage of ignorant people who don’t read legal fine print.  They think they’re getting a ring tone, dating advice or a horoscope for free.  What they’re really doing is getting charged $14.95 per month in perpetuity.  The spammer will say, “The legalese was all right there! It’s not my fault they’re stupid and didn’t read it.”  They can tell themselves that, and to a degree they’d be correct.  Their mark was ignorant.  The spammer can stay within the law and still be completely dishonest.  Their lie is that legal and ethical are interchangeable terms.  

What about Multi-level Marketers?  These are the people who play at pyramid schemes.  They say their business is selling a product.  But do they make money selling beauty products and greeting cards or do they make money signing people up to sell the system and then collect money from those people without concern for how those people will make money themselves?  The pyramid schemer only cares about their down-line.  They don’t care about the product, they don’t care about you, and they don’t care how wrong it is.  They care about one thing – making money and passing the buck.  And the excuses are endless.  “I sell a product.  It’s not my fault I make money while the guy I signed up doesn’t.  He knew the deal.”  So many excuses begin with the phrase It’s not my fault.  

The Carrot and the Stick  

How do you teach your kids the value of honesty when they simultaneously struggle with the pull of success, the two being often at odds?  There’s no money in helping your neighbor and being honest, but there’ll always be opportunity in ripping him off.  One way to teach honesty is through fear (even though you won’t learn honesty.  You’ll just learn to be good a concealing your sin).  “God is watching you, and God will set things right in the afterlife.  That used car salesman is going to hell, and if you lie, cheat or steal, God will punish you, too — Now or whenever he dang well feels like it, and you’ll be sorry.”  And sticking with the God theme, “God loves you and will reward your good heart.”  That’s religion.  The carrot and the stick, and it oftentimes works.  The carrot and stick approach doesn’t have to be a product of God.  There’s also the law, parents and friends.  They could all strike you down if you’re caught.  

Community  

I prefer to teach integrity through the lens of community.  We live among a hodge podge of people, some of whom are a little suspicious and a bunch who are generally good.  When you do good for someone, imagine that the something had been done for you rather than the other way around.  You’d be grateful for it whether you felt like returning the favor or not.  Even a dishonest person feels good when someone else does a good thing for them; his problem is that he lacks the empathy to make the translation to good deeds.  The power of empathy is the reward for good deeds.   The spammer who sold overpriced ring-tones to an ignorant person can only look at himself in the mirror if he regards his mark as a subspecies.  The pyramid schemer justifies his actions by telling himself that life is a pyramid and there’s only room for one at the top.  Success is built on the backs of others.  He lacks the ability to imagine himself as one of many.  

Reconciliation  

How do you reconcile good deeds with making money?    It’s hard but not impossible.  It starts with recognizing that they are separate things.  Don’t get me wrong.  I’m not a communist.  Making money is a good thing.  However, it comes secondary to being honest and looking out for your neighbor.  It’s possible to get rich and not cheat, but nobody gets rich selling honesty.  I like to argue with the pyramid scheme crowd.  They constantly try to equate making money with doing good, as if the two are the same thing.  “If I make money, I must be good.”  As ridiculous as that sounds, that’s one of their many arguments.  And I repeat to them, “My beef with you is that you’ve built your house on the backs of other people, not that you reached silver-duper-duper-unicorn level in 17 months.”  We all have to feed, clothe and house our kids.  Beyond those three concerns (and I’m not talking about a big house in a subdivision), honesty comes first.  

If we can teach our kids that there is a selfish reward for doing good to others, the reward of empathy rather than the fear of God or the law, we will have given them a valuable weapon against the scammers and spammers and do-no-goods of the world.   You should be more worried about your own ability to empathize than you should about whether God is going to strike you down.  Got won’t strike you down if you can feel the pain of others.  Heck he might even let you into heaven.  Your empathy makes you a good person.  The fear of retribution only keeps the paint from chipping on the outside of an otherwise rotting heart. That’s what I tell my boys, right, wrong or whatever.  

Post Script: If you are a religious person, I meant no disrespect.  I know many Christians (and others) who believe there is much more to religion than the carrot and the stick.  I recognize there will be disagreement here on religious grounds.  I respect the disagreement.

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