Morality Arrives

“Am I a good boy? Or am I a bad one?”

Illustration by Tony Johnson.

“Am I a good boy?” my four-year-old son asks, “Or am I a bad one?”

It feels like mere minutes ago the concept was alien to you. You’ll have known whether something was a good thing to do—finishing everything on your plate, saying thank you, or sleeping through the night. You knew some things were good, just as others were bad…